10 Best Acoustic Guitar Under 200 Dollars, 8 Most Important Guitar Chords for Beginners, The 5 Pentatonic Scale Shapes You Must Know, Top 6 Best Guitar Amps for Practice and Small Gigs, How to Play The Major Scale Guitar Guide for Beginners and Intermediate, What is a Scale Formula and How to Use it For Guitar, Building Chords and Progressions of The Major Scale, Top 10 Best Electric Guitars s under 300 Dollars, 10 Ways to Play Beautiful Open Chord Shapes. Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations and are still used in various musical styles to this day. You can play these pentatonic scale patterns over any piece of music that centers on an Em or G chord. 5 – Memorize the whole-half step formulas for the major and natural minor scale. Learn how to play up and down the neck with ease and break out of those box patterns . To find out more about cookies, privacy and how we use advertising, please read our Advertising Disclaimer, Contact Info - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy, Copyright © 2007 - 2020 www.guitar-chords.org.uk.

The only difference between E minor and G major pentatonic is which note functions as the tonic (or tonal center) of the scale. The scale formula for the minor pentatonic can be a useful thing to know if you want to work out the notes in any given minor pentatonic scale. This is a G minor pentatonic scale because the first note we play (sixth string, third fret) is a G note. Pentatonic Scale Fluency: Available on Kindle and Paperback, Master the minor pentatonic scale using the whole fretboard, If you are stuck in the pentatonic box then this is the way out of it.

Do this for quite some time. Pentatonic Scale Fluency available from Amazon. The diagram below shows the 5 Minor Pentatonic Scale Patterns spread over the length of the guitar neck using the F Minor Pentatonic Scale.. The minor pentatonic scale formula is 1, b3, 4, 5, b7. The formula describes the interval distances between each note of the scale. Notice how both an E minor (Em) chord and a G major chord fit into pentatonic pattern 1 in the open position. Here, you can see where all the G notes as well as some G chords are located in the pentatonic patterns. The Pentatonic Scale is a flexible scale for improvising and apart from the standard way, which is combining a scale with chords in the same key, you could also be outside the key. You can see an example of how to use the E minor and G major pentatonic scales in Playing Minor and Major Pentatonic. * Play the A harmonic minor scale on your guitar. You may recognize these chords as the CAGED forms. Minor Pentatonic Pattern #2. A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave. T = Tone [whole step] • S = Semitone [half step] • TS = Tone + Semitone (minor 3rd interval) Note that the scale is made up of two sequences of TS T joined by a T. This might help you remember it! 7 – Play a vertical E natural minor scale on the spot using your memorized minor scale formula. The same goes for when you’re using the scale as G major pentatonic.

You can move freely through any of the patterns as long as you connect them properly and stay in key. Your email address will not be published. Play this scale slowly and evenly, backward and forwards, until you've memorized the pattern.

That means both the major and minor pentatonic scales are, respectively, a major and minor scale minus two notes. The two should sound like they fit. How to Use the Pentatonic Scale as Major and Minor…, Getting to Know the Notes on a Guitar Fretboard, Guitar Theory: Roman Numerals and the Major Scale Chord Sequence. Do this for quite some time. The gray dots indicate the notes of the chords. Desi Serna, hailed as a music theory expert by Rolling Stone magazine, is a guitar player and teacher with over 10,000 hours of experience providing private guitar lessons and classes. Some songs centering on Em chords include, “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young, “Susie Q” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. By “being outside the key” means that you don't necessarily play chords and scale that belongs to the same key. The second note in pattern 1 is always your major tonic. Here are all the E notes in the pentatonic patterns, plus some commonly used Em chord shapes in gray. Pentatonic Scale Fluency available from Amazon. You can play E minor pentatonic over an Em chord or a progression that revolves around Em. In other words, it removed degrees 2 and 6! If you are stuck in the pentatonic box then this is the way out of it. When you use E minor pentatonic, the E note is the tonal center and your point of resolution.