Joseph Alexander - Guitar: Pentatonic and Blues Scales: Quickly Learn Pentatonic Scale Theory & Master Essential Licks and Exercises

Pentatonic and Blues scales are the most commonly used scales in modern music and they are amongst the most important sounds in Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and Funk. Whatever style of music you play on the guitar, you will find that intuitive understanding and application of Pentatonic scales is one of the quickest ways to building a fantastic, melodic and memorable guitar solo.

Pentatonic scales, as the name suggests contain five tones (pent = five, tonic = tones). It may seem surprising, but many of the most memorable rock and blues guitar solos are built from just these five notes. As you will see later, there are two important types of Pentatonic scale, the Major Pentatonic and the Minor Pentatonic. While both of these scales are used in blues and rock music, the Major Pentatonic scale is frequently used in country guitar solos to create a happier, more upbeat feel.

The Blues scale is a close relation of the Minor Pentatonic scale. It is identical to the Minor Pentatonic scale in every way, however, it contains one extra note and sounds a lot more bluesy.

The Minor Pentatonic is now probably the most common scale in modern music. In the classical era, the Major scale and the Melodic and Harmonic Minor scales were the ones most commonly used to create melodies, but these days most melodies, especially in Rock and Blues borrow, heavily from the Minor Pentatonic Scales.

The Minor Pentatonic / Blues Scale is so common because it contains most of the notes heard in very early blues music. The Blues became more mainstream after the period of emancipation and found its way into the pop tunes of the day. As this pop music developed over the decades, The Blues remained as a foundation of each subsequent style. By the 1970s and 1980s, the Minor Pentatonic scale had become an integral part of standard rock guitarist vocabulary after Blues had started to morph into Rock through artists like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page in the 1960s.

As each generation and genre of guitar music progresses, guitarists are finding new ways to approach the Pentatonic/Blues scale and it will remain an essential part of the modern guitarists vocabulary for a long time to come.

This book takes a look at the construction, performance and application of the Major and Minor Pentatonic scales and also the closely related blues scales. I will show you how to play each scale in five positions on the guitar fretboard so that you can master the neck. Ill also include an essential lick for each scale shape and show you how to join the scales together horizontally along the neck. Many guitarists get trapped into only playing in one position on the guitar neck so by linking up the five different shapes horizontally you will easily be able to ascend and descend the neck during your solo.

I will also include some important fluency exercises that will help you develop your guitar technique and some advice on how to speed up your playing and build your command of the guitar.

This Fund essential provides an extremely detailed look at Minor Pentatonic scales and borrows from five of my best-selling, full-length guitar books. These are the following:

You can click on each book to find out more information, or to buy them now.

While some of the information here is taken from these books, I am presenting it in a way that is concentrated and specific to Pentatonic and Blues scales. Apologies if you own any of these books and see something you recognise, my intention here is to create something focused, new and relevant understanding and playing to Pentatonic scales.

We will begin our journey with a bit of theory and find out how a scale is created.

Have fun,

Joseph

A scale is a series of steps between two fixed musical points. These two fixed points are always the same note, but in different octaves . For example, these points could both be the note C, one being higher in pitch than the other: