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Beginner Guitar Lesson – How to learn the Major Pentatonic scale and have more fun playing your guitar

By Mike Hayes | April 23, 2009

Guitar players often come in contact with a pentatonic scale
early in their guitar playing adventures. Did you know there are
many types of pentatonic scales?

Technically speaking any five note scale would qualify to be
a pentatonic scale. Now, that’s pretty scary isn’t it!

Fortunately, we only need know two types of pentatonic scales,
the major pentatonic scale and the minor pentatonic scale to
produce the sounds we hear on the majority of commercial
recordings.

It’s essential for the advancing guitarist to know both major and
minor pentatonic scales as these versatile scales will inject
your guitar playing with exciting, dynamic and colorful sounds
adding a new level of interest for the listener.

Major pentatonic scale structure: We construct the major
pentatonic scale be taking a diatonic major scale and omitting
the 4th and 7th notes of that scale.

examples:

C major diatonic scale

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C

C major pentatonic scale (five note scale)

C  D  E     G  A

G major diatonic scale

G  A  B  C  D  E  F#  G

G major pentatonic scale (five note scale)

G  A  B     D  E

A major diatonic scale

A  B  C#  D  E  F#  G#  A

A major pentatonic scale (five note scale)

A  B  C#     E  F#

Major pentatonic scale application: country, folk, country rock
and easy listening commercial/adult radio songs.

Even though the minor pentatonic is often touted as the one scale
for every musical situation  guitarist’s with  street
smart practical band experience will know that the minor
pentatonic scale is not the best choice for certain songs.

Let’s compare the notes in the two types of pentatonic scales.

C major pentatonic scale – C  D  E  G  A

C minor pentatonic scale – C  Eb F  G  Bb

As you can see certain notes are common to both scales, however
you will notice a number of notes that differ.

This explains why a novice guitar player can be playing away
blissfully unaware of the differences in pentatonic scales …
until they play a sour note, which they then try to camouflage by
bending or sliding all over the guitar fretboard desperately searching for
a better sounding note.

Of course, it would have been much better (and less embarrassing)
to have determined which scale was the correct choice for your
particular musical project … before landing in a sticky musical
situation.

Many players just shake their heads and walk away from the whole
scale/theory aspect of guitar playing believing that it’s all too
much bother.

Remember, your ear will only take you so … far that’s where quality musical theory can help you (a) find the sounds you are hearing in your head and (b) assist you in understanding the language of music.

There’s no point wasting valuable time re-inventing the musical
wheel!

I invite you to use these tips and tools when you play the
guitar.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com

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