LOVIN' My Pentatonic Scales! - 480

Breaking out of pentatonic stagnation

0:00Welcome, friends, to the Play Guitar Podcast. I am Lee, and this is the show that's here to help you become the guitar player that you always wanted to be. Well, you're going to have to play some pentatonic scales if you want to do that. If you want to become the guitar player that you always wanted to be, most likely you're going to touch on some pentatonic scales. You probably know them already. You probably love them. I love them. I play them all the time. The music that I listen to uses a ton of

0:31pentatonic scales. But what happens? You start to learn them. You learn one. Usually that's the case, one or two, and then you get stuck, and everything starts to sound the same. You got your foot in the door, but you know there's a lot farther that you could go with this. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to give you my three recommendations for getting yourself out of the ditch and moving forward and starting to open up the fretboard with pentatonic scales. Let's start with where you're at. Let's take A minor, pentatonic,

1:06pattern one at the fifth fret. We all know this one. One, four, one, three, one, three, one, three, one, four, one, four. And the roots are the first note, two frets up, two strings over, and then on the high E string, fifth fret as well, too. Those are our A's.

Shifting between major and minor

1:27Now the first step that we're going to take is take these scale patterns that we already know, and we start to learn how to play them in both major pentatonic and minor pentatonic. Don't worry about this. It's super simple. It's easy to do, and I'm going to make it even simpler for you. Okay? So we've got this A minor pentatonic scale, and we're starting it with the first finger on the fifth fret of the low E string. And that's our root, A. Now I'm going to take that same root,

2:00but instead of using my first finger on it, I'm going to put my pinky on it. And that shifts my hand back three frets. So now I'm at the second, third, fourth, and fifth fret with my hand here. And I'm going to play the same pattern. Okay? Things have changed. The position has changed, but I'm not worried about that. I'm just thinking about the pattern, the one, four, one, three, one, three. In fact, this one, I'm just going to start with four, because that's where the root is. One, three, one, three, one, three, one, four, one, four. That's your major pentatonic.

2:38Minor pentatonic first with the first finger. Major pentatonic with the pinky. The minor pentatonic works great over blues and it works great over a minor song, songs that are in a minor key. The, uh, the blues is not in a minor key. The blues is usually, well, it can be, but it's usually, uh, it uses dominant chords, which has a major third in it. So there's a rub

3:09there. So that bluesy sound that you hear from traditional blues songs, it's, it's, there's a tension there that's on purpose. Your, uh, minor third and your major third are clashing a little bit there, but that's okay. It sounds nice. People like the way that sound, but, um, your major pentatonic, you can use this in major keys. Uh, you can use it, uh, uh, with the blues and dominant keys. We can use both of those in the blues with a, with a dominant seven. They both

3:44sound very nice. Uh, so you're covered as far as popular music, what, what, what you need. You've got your major and minor just from one pattern. So now you see we've taken you from being stuck and getting the same sound all the time. Now we have a choice. We're building out like a painter's palette of colors. You can use that pattern with your first finger from minor and use it with your pinky for major. You have your choice. Now, what does that do for you? That, you know, uh, when I go to learn a song, first thing I do is try and find what key it's in. Let's see, A, right? And then

4:19I want to know, well, is it major or minor? And if it's like a song with power chords, you know, like a heavy metal song or a hard rock song, sometimes it's very difficult to know what, what key it's in, if it's major or minor. So you can try a little bit of each of those patterns and it'll tell you right away. One will work and one won't. So right away, this is a tool for learning songs as well as getting, you know, you, uh, a little bit more familiar with different sounds on the guitar. So now we've got that. That's the first step, being able to do major and minor. The next step

Adding pattern four on the fretboard

4:52is, uh, we want to learn one other pattern. Say you're, you're good with pattern one and it's time to move into some more. And you look at that sheet and it's got five patterns. It just looks overwhelming. Let's hold off on that. Let's just learn one extra pattern. And I'm going to say pattern four. Now the low string is where we found our starting note for this pattern one. On pattern four, the starting note is going to be on the A string. So when I learn a song, the very first thing I do is

5:24I want to know what key I'm in and can I get one of those notes on the low string and one on the A string. Uh, this is what you do in rhythm guitar. Anyway, for a bar chords, you get E shape and A shape bar chords. You're looking for the same thing. It's no different than this. So, uh, we were in the key of A. So my A on the A string is going to be 12th fret or the open string. I'm going to do a 12th fret. Give me some room to move. Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play my pattern four right there where my first finger hits the A on the A string. So on the low string would be one,

5:57four, and then one. There's the A. One, four, one, three. There. One, four, one, one, four, one, three, one, three, two, four, one, four. That's my pattern four. Why would I want to just learn these two patterns? They're in different places. Why would I want to do that? Because what we just learned before, that trick with the pinky and the first finger, we can also do here with pattern four. It doesn't work on the other ones, but these two patterns. So if you think about it, if I find my two A's

6:31and I know one's got pattern one and the other one's got pattern four, I've got a big chunk of the guitar, right? I've got the pattern one with its octave up at the 17th fret, fifth fret, 17th fret, and I have pattern four, which is an open position at the 12th fret. We're starting to take chunks of the fretboard and knock them down pretty, pretty easily. So there we have our minor pentatonic.

6:59So I'm going to practice that a good bit over top of some chords. Then I'm going to say, well, if I can do that with pattern one, swap with my pinky, I think I'm going to try it here. So I'm going to take my first finger, and I'm going to put my pinky there on the 12th fret of the A string and play pattern four at this point. There it is, major pentatonic.

7:32Folk music, soul music, southern rock, gospel music. You're going to be getting a ton of country music, a ton of use out of this. So now I've got two places on my guitar that I can find in about two seconds where I just find the root notes, put my fingers in those places, and then swap my first finger for my pinky, depending on whether I want it to be major or minor or not. This is something you want to practice for a long time. You want to get used to this. So I've got a different place of the guitar where I can use the same idea, and it's only two patterns, and they're pretty

8:06similar. The biggest difference is the B string on the pattern four. It's a little off from the other one. But where do you go from here? And you might say, you know, don't tell me anymore. I'm okay, but

Connecting neighboring scale patterns

8:22I want you to know where you're headed. What we're going to start talking about is neighboring patterns, and you'll start practicing pattern one, but you're like, you know what? I think I'm going to go. What comes before it? We already start to do this with these little extensions. You see people do the third fret, fifth fret, third fret, fifth fret, and then slide up into pattern one at the fifth fret for A minor. And then at the top, they'll go eighth fret to tenth fret, eighth fret to tenth fret on the top two

8:57strings. And think of that as the upper extension of pattern one, A minor, penitentiary. And go up or go down. We're adding a note to the top and the bottom of that pattern. But what those are, are just fragments of a whole pattern that's behind or in front of that scale pen. So if we think about pattern one, what's behind it? Pattern five. It's always a big circle. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. So then, well, what's pattern five in minor

9:31penitentiary? It's between the second and the fifth fret. And you'll practice going back and forth between those two patterns. I'm in pattern one. Let's go back to pattern five. Back to pattern one. Back to pattern five. One, five. Going back and forth. And you'd say, well, you know, a lot of these

10:07notes are overlaps, right? They're doubles. The pattern five has most of the same notes that pattern one does. But they're on different strings. The A that you use in pattern five is at the second fret of the G string. And then that same A in pattern one is on the seventh fret of the D string. Listen to the difference. This is your G string. That's your D string. Sometimes I might want to have something

10:42that has a little bit sharper sound. Sometimes I might want mellow. Oh, okay. So now I have a choice. This painter's palette that we've been building with this, this painter's palette is starting to grow. I have my pattern one minor pentatonic. I have my pattern one major pentatonic. Oh, all right. Now I have my pattern four major pentatonic and minor pentatonic. Oh, great. So I've got, I've got two main sounds in two different ways each to play them. Now I'm growing

11:18that by finding my adjacent patterns and they each have their own sound. They don't sound like pattern one. And that's why you hear other people play. It doesn't sound stale or the same, like, like maybe you're playing because they're moving into these different patterns. The same licks could be played in different patterns and sound completely different depending on the strings that it's voiced on. So that was pattern one to pattern five. The other one for pattern one is pattern two. It's above it.

11:59Well, let's start going back and forth between that. Now I'm doing the slides. Keep an eye out for the day after this video's release and I have a whole finger swapping exercise that gets you back and forth between these patterns. Uh, not doing the sliding like I'm doing. I'm having a whole.

12:30There it was.

12:36It's an exercise you can do. It's like a spider exercise, but it helps you go back and forth with all these neighboring patterns. So that's pattern one. One. Minor pentatonic, uh, neighbors to pattern five neighbors to pattern two.

12:55What if we did that in major pattern one, a major pentatonic

13:03I'm going to do it up high here. Um, well, let's start with going up to pattern two from here first. It gives us a nice B up top there.

13:18And I'll go up here so we can go back to pattern five.

13:27So one at a time, you're learning these neighboring patterns, adding them into your practice, adding them into your improv as well, too. Uh, and you're starting to say, okay, I've got my landing points. My landing points are pattern one and pattern four. Uh, and now I've gotten gone to pattern one and I've got my neighboring patterns. I can play a half of the neck just with that there. Well, we have the other half that's around pattern four. So here's minor. Let's do a close up here. This minor pentatonic.

14:00Pattern four. Well, obviously pattern three would be behind that.

14:08If I'm going to go back and forth between them.

14:13Now pattern three has a very interesting shape. On the G string, we have a one four. Then on the B string, the next one, we go up a fret and do one four. One four, one four, but kind of offset. That one on the B string that goes up higher happens to be the note on the B string that, uh, you use your second finger for and pattern four. The only one you use your second finger. So I'm getting used to moving from four back. Now let's go four forward.

15:01So here's our pattern four minor pentatonic. Pattern five comes right after it. Now I'm getting a nice high A note from that. And I can start to see how the puzzle pieces work. If you've seen some of my, uh, uh, recent episodes, I've shared a pentatonic, uh, scale pattern sheet that has colors from the front

15:32notes and back notes of each of the patterns. And you see how they fit perfectly just like, um, a puzzle. And, uh, so we've done minor and look, we can do the same thing with major pattern four, pattern three behind it, up to pattern four major pentatonic, and then pattern five there. So if you think about it in both major and minor, we have pattern one and pattern four, we have the neighborings. Pattern one has five behind it, two in front of it. Pattern four has three behind it and five in front of it. That's

16:06everything. We've got the whole neck of the guitar at this point. You started with, I've got one pattern and I've got this sheet that looks completely overwhelming. I can't think of all that. Right. We're not going to try to do that. We're going to end up there by accident by doing other things. So we've got pattern one down, uh, we're going to find pattern four. We're going to be able to do those both major and minor pentatonic. Then you're going to start going from pattern one to pattern five

16:37and just practice that back and forth. It could be, it could be weeks that you do that. It could be a week. I don't know. It depends on you, how you, how you learn. Um, and then we're going to add pattern two in front of it. Now, like I said before, make sure that you keep an eye out, uh, the next video. If this is in the future, you can just go to my channel. It'll be the next video after this one. And it's going to have, um, my system. It's like a spider exercise, but it's for changing between pentatonic patterns and really making them solid. Uh, this is something you can

17:08do every day. It's a finger switching system and, uh, I do it a lot and it's wonderful. I've been, uh, not even, I started off doing it, uh, unconsciously. I just started, well, here's a good way to go into the the scales and now I'm using it for teaching and making, uh, um, an exercise out of it. Okay. All right, everybody. That was fun. Uh, this is the play guitar podcast. I did a lot of playing in this one, which is always fun in the podcast. And if you're listening to this by audio, uh, you'll get

17:38a lot more out of it. Uh, if you check out the video link, uh, so head over to play guitar Academy on YouTube and I thank you for your time and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.