« | Home | »

Learn Guitar Trick #4 – Minor Pentatonic Scale System F minor

By Mike Hayes | December 17, 2009

It’s easy to get tangled up in the guitar scales department,
there’s literally thousands of scales to learn. Do you have to
know all these scales to play guitar? Fortunately the answer is a
resounding ‘no’!

So the question is … which scales should we learn and which
scales can we drop of at the nearest bus stop?

High on your priority list should be the minor pentatonic scale,
this is the scale most guitar players learn first, the problem is
they tend to get it confused with the blues scale which is
similar but not the same.

Minor Pentatonic scale system – F minor pentatonic.

The notes in the F minor pentatonic scale are:

F – Ab – Bb – C – Eb – (F)

If you played these notes anywhere on the guitar fingerboard you
would be playing the F minor pentatonic scale.

Here’s the most common fingering pattern for the scale

F – using your first finger behind the first fret, sixth string

Ab – played with the fourth finger, fourth fret, sixth string

Bb – first finger, first fret, fifth string

C – played with your third finger behind the third fret, fifth
string

Eb – first finger, first fret, fourth string

F Minor pentatonic scale pattern

————————-
————————-
————————-
—————–1—[3]-
———1—3———–
-[1]—4—————–

Keynotes indicated as [ ]

Keynotes are important as they identify the key of the scale
pattern when it’s moved around the fingerboard.

Pentatonic scales are five note scales, notice how both the first
and last notes of the scale are exactly the same letter name.

Play the scale slowly listening closely to the ’sound’ of each
note, when you are ready to move on try playing the next pattern,
it’s exactly the same notes only an octave higher.

F minor pentatonic played one octave higher:

———————-[1]-
————–1—4——-
——1—3—————
-[3]———————-
————————–
————————–

Once the octave fingering and the sound of the notes become
familiar try playing the original scale, stop for four beats then
play the octave version, wait four more beats then back to the
original version,

Continue practicing like this until everything works on
autopilot.

Creating a backing track.

Our next project is to record a backing track that we can
practice our scale over.

A good idea is to use power chords derived from the names of the
notes in the scale. Therefore any of the following notes will
work as keynotes for power chords: F – Ab – Bb – C – Eb

Typical chord progression(s) would be:

F /// | Ab /// | Bb /// | C /// ||

or

F /// | Bb /// |C /// | Bb /// ||

Make up your own progressions and record them for 5 – 10 minutes
that way you will have plenty of backing track to solo over, if
the backing track is too short you will be just starting to
develop your ideas and the background will stop.

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

You’ll learn about hit song templates, simple scales,easy chords, red hot rhythms, and successful practice strategies in text, audio and video.

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

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Fretboard, Guitar Tips, Learn And Master Guitar | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Learn Guitar Trick #4 – Minor Pentatonic Scale System F minor”

  1. Sound Octave Says:
    December 17th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    [...] Octave Learn Guitar Trick 4 Minor Pentatonic Scale System F minor Guitar Lessons Blog More infos are available here: Learn Guitar Trick 4 Minor Pentatonic Scale System F [...]

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.