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The Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales Look Like This

The document discusses different guitar scales including the major and minor pentatonic scales. It explains that the pentatonic scales only use 5 notes and have 2 notes per string, making them easy to play using hammer-ons and pull-offs. It also covers the major and minor scales which use all 7 notes in a key and have 3 notes per string. More advanced scales discussed include different positions of the pentatonic scales that can be connected to move up and down the neck, as well as the 7 major modes that provide different sounds when improvising.

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Bolo Van Dame
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168 views3 pages

The Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales Look Like This

The document discusses different guitar scales including the major and minor pentatonic scales. It explains that the pentatonic scales only use 5 notes and have 2 notes per string, making them easy to play using hammer-ons and pull-offs. It also covers the major and minor scales which use all 7 notes in a key and have 3 notes per string. More advanced scales discussed include different positions of the pentatonic scales that can be connected to move up and down the neck, as well as the 7 major modes that provide different sounds when improvising.

Uploaded by

Bolo Van Dame
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The major and minor pentatonic scales look like this:

The black notes are the Root note of the key. So, if you're playing in D Minor, slide up the E string to fret 10 so
that you're starting on a D and then play the minor pentatonic.

You can play the minor pentatonic over a major key to get a cheesy rock sound if you really want, but I'd
recommend using major for major keys and minor for minor keys. Please don't play the major pentatonic over a
minor key within earshot of me.

These pentatonic scales are great because there's two notes on each string and you can use hammer-ons and pull
offs to legato your way up and down the scale really quickly. Just keep practising against a chord loop and work
your way around the scale.

Now, I also mentioned the major and minor scales:

For some reason in these diagrams the root note is white, but anyway. Learning these two scales will let you
sound a little more sophisticated than a simple pentatonic scale because you're using all 7 notes in the key. This
gives you more freedom to play melodic lines within your improvisation. Notice that this time there's 3 notes per
string. This means that you can, once again, use hammer-ons and pulloffs to legato up and down at high speed.

You can also switch between the pentatonic and normal scales while improvising. As long as you keep track of
where the root note is, it will sound fine.
Advanced scales

If you haven't heard of pentatonic scales before, or you don't know music theory, I recommend ignoring
everything below here.

There are five pentatonic scales and seven major modes which you can learn. Let's look at the pentatonic scales
first:

Notice that the minor pentatonic is position 1 and the major pentatonic is position 2. This is because the spaces
between the notes are the same, but in a different order. If you learn all five positions, you can slot them all
together like this:

If you memorise this, you will be able to play the pentatonic scale and then change between the positions to move
up and down the neck, as well as up and down the strings. This means you can climb higher and higher, and then
drop back down to the lower register.
So, by the same logic, here's the positions of the major modes:

And when you slot them together you get this absolutely horrendous mess:

If, one day, you ever manage to memorise this absolute monstrosity, then you'll be able to improvise in both
major and minor, and other obscure scales like Dorian "Happy minor" and Phrygian "Evil minor", or my personal
favourite Lydian "Space scale". If you want to learn more about the major modes, I recommend this video by
Signals Music Studio.

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