Pentatonic scale guitar lesson: Tab + video - GuitarNick.com
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Pentatonic scale guitar lesson: Tab + video
What is it?
Penta is the Greek root word for five. So a pentatonic scale consists of only 5 different notes.
It's one of the easiest scales to remember and it fits in just about everyone's style in some way or another.
It's commonly used in blues, rock, metal, country, bluegrass, jazz, folk, everything.
The minor pentatonic scale has some magical properties that you will learn if you play blues or rock.
Learn how to play the scale
We start with the minor pentatonic scale in E because it's a "guitar key" - all open strings belong to this scale.
The scale begins and ends with the note E, it's the root of the scale.
We can even start the scale from the E on the fourth string, as shown below.
Combining the two previous scales we have a two octave scale played with all the strings.
Now instead of starting from the note E, we start from the note G on the third fret. In this case G is the root of the new scale that will be played as shown below.
Even the G minor pentatonic scale can be played on two octaves with all the strings.
If we want to play the A minor pentatonic scale we start now from the fifth fret.
