What Is The Pentatonic Scale?
One of the most important of guitar scales, the pentatonic scale consists of only five notes, and those notes can be played in as many octaves as your guitar has frets. The pentatonic scale has a very familiar sound and you will recognize it immediately when you hear it.
Commonly used in folk songs, rock, blues, and metal, the pentatonic scale sounds good and is easy to learn and utilize. All the notes within this scale are strong notes, so when you improvise over a chord progression using pentatonics, you can’t sound bad, as each note just seems to fit in.
There are two scales, and the first one we’re going to look at is the Major pentatonic scale. It contains 5 of the 7 notes found in the regular Major scale. The scales across the entire guitar neck can be broken down into easy to visualize ” boxes “. Below is the major pentatonic scale played in the key of A Major. It covers all the 5 positions that can be played across the guitar neck. The other scale is the minor pentatonic scale.
Go through these and play them over and over in your practice routine until it becomes natural to you.
