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Learn Guitar Secret #9 – Major Pentatonic Scale System C major

By Mike Hayes | February 12, 2010

If you know the guitar riff on “My Girl” by The Temptations the
lead guitar intro of “Your Mamma Don’t Dance” by Poison or know
the famous bass riff on Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” you already
know the sound of the major pentatonic scale.

The pentatonic scale in both the major and minor versions are
around us daily we just don’t notice them and we certainly don’t
understand how important these scales are until we try to work
songs out by ear!

Everyday our ears are saturated with an avalanche of music …
radio, TV, DVD’s iPod’s … you name it and the media is
bombarding our eardrums 24/7/365.

Over the past couple of decades instrumental musical training and
education has dramatically improved, there’s more people who can
play an instrument with a high degree of technical proficiency
hundreds of people have learnt the theory of music but the one
area which has not been addressed is the area of musical
appreciation.

Musical appreciation is the skill of … “how” to listen to
music, “what” to listen for, and most of all … how to apply
what you are hearing to your instrument!

The secret to learning the guitar and developing your musical ear
(memory for sound) is to make a concious effort to pay attention
to what we are listening to with the knowledge that what we are
hearning will turn up in other songs … the trick is to notice
them when they show in other musical settings.

Today we will concentrate on the C major pentatonic scale if you
are interested in the C minor pentatonic scale you may like to
check out my article on that topic.

C major pentatonic scale:

The notes in the C major pentatonic scale are …

C – D – E – G – A – [C]

Keynotes indicated as [ ]

C Major pentatonic scale pattern

——————————–
——————————–
——————————–
————————–[10]–
————–10—12———-
-[8]–10–12——————-

The same scale one octave higher could be played like this:

————————————-
——————————-[13]–
——————–12—14———
–[10]—12—14——————–
————————————
————————————

Application:

Major pentatonic scales are derived from the major diatonic scale
created by omitting the fourth and seventh notes of the major
diatonic scale.

Therefore all the chords from the harmonization of the major
scale will work as backgrounds for the major pentatonic scale.

Triadic (three note chords) created from C major scale:

C – Dm – Em – F – G -Am – Bdim – C

Scaletone seventh (four note chords) created from C major scale:

CMaj7 – Dm7 – Em7 – FMaj7 – G7 – Am7 – Bm7b5 – C

Here is a typical major pentatonic type chord progression using
straight major chords

Ex 1. Blues style

C ///| C ///| C ///| C ///|
F ///| F ///| C ///| C ///|
G ///| F ///| C ///| C ///||

Ex.2 The 2 – 5 – 1 progression (triadic)

Dm ///| G7 ///| C ///| C ///||

Ex 3 The 2 – 5 – 1 progression (scaletone seventh)

Dm7 ///| G7 ///| CMaj7 ///| CMaj7 ///||

Ex. 4 The 1 – 6 – 4 – 5 progression (triadic)

C ///| Am ///|F ///| G ///||

Ex. 5 The 1 – 6 – 4 – 5 progression (scaletone seventh)

CMaj7 ///| Am7 ///| FMaj7 ///| G7 ///||

Ex. 6 The 1 – 6 – 2 – 5 progression (triadic)

C ///| Am ///|Dm ///| G ///||

Ex. 7 The 1 – 6 – 2 – 5 progression (scaletone seventh)

CMaj7 ///| Am7 ///| Dm7 ///| G7 ///||

The C major pentatonic scale will work over all these harmonic
backgrounds, why not record some of you favorite progressions
and play the scale over the pre-recorded progressions at your
next session on guitar.

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Tips, guitar scales | No Comments »

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