Ultimate Pentatonic Scale Guide [Every Essential Shape!]

I'm going to guess that 99% of people clicking on this video including you have already learned the pentatonic in some form but let me ask you this can you play instantly in any key minor and major can you play not just up the strings but across the neck and can you seamlessly join up all five positions of the cage system while all this might seem daunting with a little bit of structure I believe this is well within the reach of every intermediate guitarist so in this video I want to set out what to learn and in what order to give you a complete understanding of the pentatonic I'll include lots of playing from my previous videos so you get to see and hear how each concept is advancing our capabilities so let's do it let's start in the obvious place the root position minor pentatonic and here it is in a minor now this is sometimes called the E minor shape because it fits around the E minor shape bar chord here now let me stress this is isn't just some beginner shape it's the basis for tons of classic solos throughout history but of course we don't want to just play up and down the scale like that and you're about to see me play a full solo using just this shape but including techniques like double stops slides and different types of bends which really bring it to life so it's no longer just a scale but actual music the solo is actually going to be in the key of C minor here at the ninth fret but we need to talk more about that [Music] after [Music] let me just say that every scale and solo you'll see here has been covered in more detail in one of my other videos so do check the links in the description also full access members to my patreon can download all the tabs and backing tracks as well as my PDF guide showing all these pentatonic shapes in each of the five main Keys we use for guitar anyway back to our root position pentatonic shape so if that's the minor pentatonic what about major well we can use exactly the same shape you see the track you just thir started on a c Shar minor chord went down through b and a and then resolved to E major so it has the sense of starting minor and ending major and it's incredibly common that songs move between minor and major in this way and demonstrates a really important point that we can use the same pentatonic shape over both minor and major this is because every minor key has a major key with exactly the same notes known as the relative major and our first position from pentatonic shape always tells us which two keys it can be used over with the first note here telling us which minor key so in this case at the ninth fret C Shar minor and the second note here at the 12th fret being an e tells us we can use the same shape over E [Music] major as you can hear coming back down to a minor and you see starting at the fifth fret we have our a obviously telling us it works over a minor but then the second note here of the eighth Breet being a c tells us it works over C major once again as you can hear so now we know how to play the pentatonic in one position for step two we need to start moving around the neck now as the name suggests the pentatonic is a five note scale and there's a couple of simple five note shapes we can learn which repeat all across the neck and what you're about to see is these give us a diagonal path up and down making our solos much more fluid the first is the 2 + 3 diagonal shape so in a minor also C major remember here's our root note of a but we're going to start two Frets below here on the G at the third fret and make a four note box so G and a three and five on the low E then up to the a string and play those same Frets C and D so g a c d now these four notes make up 80% of our five note pentatonic and this little box is great for all sorts of licks that kind of thing then to complete the scale we just slide up two Frets on the a string up to the seventh there which gives us an e so that's the full pentatonic there 1 2 3 4 5 g a c d e but then the real beauty of this pattern is you'll see when we make that slide it positions us perfectly to start all over again on the D string right here under our fingers so starting again from the fifth fret of the D string 1 2 3 4 5 g a c d e exactly the same g a c d e g a c d e and any licks we play down here we can play exactly the same now on these higher strings then again when we make the slide on the G string we're ready to move up and play the pattern again starting on the B string this time we just need to slip up one fret to the eighth but here it is G a c d and slide up to the E so there we have that exact same pattern g a c d e on the lowest strings g a c d e on the middle strings and g a c d e on the high strings now if I connect all three of these positions you can see how this moves us right across the neck from down here to up [Music] here now here's an example of a solo using this 2+3 diagonal in a [Music] minor so that was the two + 3 diagonal now for step three let's look at an alternative for 3 + 2 so sometimes this is considered the major version because we start on the root note from the relative major in this case a c here at the eighth fret and this time we're starting with three notes so let's play one 2 and then slide up to three so c d e and then up to the a string for two notes G and a so now this is a 3 + 2 [Music] shape but five notes to complete pentatonic 1 2 3 4 5 now the eagle eyem you might spot that these notes Here c d e are the exact same as c d e the second part of the 2+ 3 diagonal so really this is just an inversion on the same concept so instead of g a c d e we get c d e g a but once again we can repeat this pattern across the string so c d e g a and then moving up to the D string c d e g a and then up again to the B string C d e g a Al together and then I could also stick high C on the end if I [Music] wanted so let's hear a solo using this 3+2 pattern this time it's in the key of G major starting here at the third [Music] [Applause] fret [Music] so let's recap what we have so far we've got the E minor or root position shape the 2 plus 3 diagonal and the 3+ 2 diagonal now these cover a huge of real estate across the neck but what if we want to spend a bit more time up this end then for step four we need the a minor pentatonic shape so we said the root position pentatonic forms around the E minor chord shape like here for a minor at the fifth fret well the a minor shape forms around the a minor chord shape so if we were to play an A Minor bar chord in the a minor chord shape that would be here at the 12th fret that a minor bar chord then if we look for our pentatonic notes a c d e and G around this position we could start here on the low E string with an e and then up to G at the 15th then A and C D and E G and a c and d and e and G so 12 15 12 15 12 14 12 14 13 15 12 15 all [Music] together this shape is hugely used in many classic solos and some really useful things we can do here include making a Big Bend up to the root n of a from the 15th on the high e a great string on string Bend where we Bend up on the 15th of the B whilst also playing the unbent note on the 15th of the high e and then loads of great little licks between the G and B strings which fit really nicely under our fingers now we could quite happily play a full Solo in this position but I want to show you something a little more sophisticated so let's join up everything we know so far starting with the root position or E minor shape then the 2+ 3 diagonal which is going to cut right across that root position and get us up here to the 12th fret where we find our a minor [Music] shape then the 3 + 2 diagonal which is going to cut right across that a minor shape and get us up here to the 17th fret where once again we [Music] find the E minor or root position but now an octave higher so you see these shapes cover the full neck and these diagonal patterns really allow us to move about and get between different positions as we solo so here's a solo bringing all this together and just see how easily I can move around the guitar [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you then step number five and we want to take on all five positions of what's known as the cage system I'm not going to spend long here so pause to follow the diagrams as needed but essentially there's a pentatonic shape across all six strings starting on each of the five notes of the scale this is sometimes known as the cage system because of the way it relates to the chord c a g e and D or simply the five positions of the pentatonic scale so we already know position position one starting on the root note of a so that's position one but then if we take the second note and now use that as our starting point we get position two which looks like this now take note that this is exactly the same notes just with a different starting point so we had a c d e g a and now we get c d e g a c so it's just the same notes different starting point then position three starting on the third degree of the scale so a d here and it's going to look like this then position four starting on the E so this is our a minor shape which we already know and then lastly starting on the fifth degree this G here it's going to look like this so that giv giv us five positions of the same [Music] scale these shapes take a bit of time to digest but it's really worth doing to maximize your fretboard knowledge the exercise I find most helpful was simply playing up one [Music] position and then down the next up the next position and then down the next and so on and this full exercise is going to look like [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this [Music] so that's great as an exercise but what's the musical point of learning all these shapes well each shape offers something unique in terms of the licks that fall nicely under your fingers here's an example of a blue solo where I'll start in position one and then every couple of bars move up to the next position before ending back up again in position one and octave higher in each position I focused on a musical idea you to that shape but then followed it up with a recurring lick to show that each shape remains part of our same pentatonic [Music] [Applause] scale [Applause] [Music] so there we go study these five Concepts and I promise you'll be so much more confident when the time comes to solo

Channel: Jules Guitar

Views: 45,732

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Id: Q8TJZb4wVmY

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2024