The Best Pentatonic Exercise? [Master All 5 Positions]

[Music] right now you're seeing what I consider to be the most important exercise to master the pentatonic [Music] scale this was a game Cher for me and you can imagine how covering the full neck like this will transform your knowledge and confidence when the time comes to [Music] solo so we all know the pentatonic is a five note scale in the case of a minor it's just a c d e and G this sounds simple but if we map everywhere we can play these notes on the neck it looks like this which is too much for most of us to process so we need to break this down into smaller shapes that we can absorb into our muscle memory we can take each of the five notes of the scale and use them as a starting point to build a pattern on the guitar neck this gives us five shapes which together allow us to play anywhere on the neck think of learning these shapes is just like when you learned your first chords and just as important so let's look at how we play these shapes and we'll build up the exercise you saw at the beginning as we go through we'll look deeper at how we can apply these positions musically in future videos but for now let's focus on getting the notes down so position one is the classic pentatonic shape that pretty much everyone starts with in a minor it's five and eight on the low E and then five and seven on the a five and seven on the D five and seven on the G and then five and eight eight on the B five and eight on the high e so let's just start by playing up and down this [Music] shape now as most of us know that one already let's get straight into position two which starts on the second degree of the scale the C so now instead of this C being the second note in our pattern is going to become our starting point and our pattern will look like this eight and 10 on the low E seven and 10 on the a seven and 10 on the D seven and nine on the G and then shift across a little bit with your finger for 8 and 10 on the B and8 and 10 on the high e so Al together up and down that [Music] one now this shape isn't quite as comfortable and just a word on fingering sometimes you'll see me using my little finger when we get a three fret Gap and sometimes not this depends where on the guitar I'm playing and whether I expect to bend the note for example up here in the first position I often Bend this note so I play it on the stronger finger here but you can do what's comfortable for you anyway once we've got this shape under our [Music] fingers we can start our main exercise and what we want to be able to do is come up position one and then back down position two like this so up position one so we get to the top of there and then what I'm going to do is shift across just lift the pressure off a little bit and come up to the last note position two and then come back down that [Music] position so all together up position one shift down position two and I can go back around again and create like an infinite Loop to practice that if I like and now you can see just with these two [Music] positions we're really starting to build out our fretboard knowledge for this pentatonic [Music] scale so now on to position three and this time we're starting on the third degree of the scale the D so 1 2 3 and the first position now this D we're going to bring up to here the 10th fret on the low E and our shape's going to look like this 10 and 12 on the low E 10 and 12 on the a 10 and 12 on the D and then on the G 9 and 12 and then we need to offset a little bit there to go 10 and 13 on the B and 10 and 12 on the high e all [Music] together just be careful where that offset happens with the two strings where we' got those three fret gaps [Music] there so back to our exercise and now we can play up position [Music] one shift across and down position two and then shift across up position three all together [Music] you see and our fretboard knowledge is really building enormously now just be careful when you make this shift across from here to here you just need to move this first finger over and that should be fine just try and play it without too much of a gap there as you play through this up and then down exercise don't worry about playing fast this is about building fretboard knowledge not shred but you do want to go fast enough that it builds muscle memory I.E you're playing slightly on autopilot and you want to play a consistent Tempo without any pulses now moving on up to position four so starting on the fourth degree of the scale 1 2 3 4 which is an e but we're going to play it here starting at the 12th fret on the low E so we're going to get 12 and 15 on the low E 12 and 15 on the a 12 and 14 on the D 12 and 14 on the G and then 13 and 15 on the B and 12 and 15 on the high e Al [Music] together now this is probably the most used position after position one so get really used to using this one let's just play up and down [Music] it like that then back to our exercise and you can guess where this is going up position one down position two up position three and once you get to here we can shift over and down position four like [Music] [Applause] [Music] that then all the way up to the fifth position starting on the fifth degree of the scale 1 2 3 4 5 which is this G but we're going to be starting up here with it here at the 15th front of the low E so we've got 15 and 17 on the low E 15 and 17 on the a 14 and 17 on the D 14 and 17 on the G 15 and 17 on the B and 15 and 17 on the high e like that so now all together for our exercise we've got up position one down position two up position three down position four and then up position five and then what you'll realize is once we get to the end of position five here we can shift up again and we're back at position one but an octave higher now once we've got back to position one up here and come down that one we can actually shift back down and come up position five shift back down down position four and so on and so forth so now we can create an infinite Loop going up and down that we can practice [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with [Music] now once we've got this exercise working starting on position one we need to change things up so let's do it again but this time we'll start on position five down here starting with this G of the third fret on the low E string so position five here shifting into position one here and what you'll see that this reverses which positions we're going up versus down so we started off going up position one now we're coming down it then we were going down position two now we'll be going up it and it's surprising how much this small change really tests our knowledge of these [Music] shapes [Music] now on my Patron I've tabed out this exercise in each of the five main Keys we use for guitar and what you'll find is the ideal starting position will vary depending on the key so for example if we look at C Shar minor where we get position one here at the ninth fret we probably don't want to start there but we could start with position three down here at the second fret and then position four five and then we don't see that classic position one until most of the way through the [Music] exercise now I believe the typical intermediate guitarist can get this exercise down in a few weeks maybe a month which is nothing in comparison to a lifetime of guitar playing and I promise this will transform your soloing forever

Channel: Jules Guitar

Views: 115,490

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Id: n2H6EMHbU7Q

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024