Tutorial - Thinking behind the Five Pentatonic Shapes

What’s up guys, this is Bryan and today I’d like to talk about my way of thinking about the pentatonic scale – so let’s take the A minor Pentatonic as our example.

I usually think about the root, the starting string and the starting finger.

So, we start with our first finger on the 5th fret of the 6th string, which is our root note ‘A’. We then play through this shape:

Example 1

Since our first finger is our starting finger, our next note is going to be moving up (towards the body of the guitar) so I’m also thinking directionally – this shape would be moving upwards.

If we use our fourth finger as our starting finger as shown in example 2, our next note would be down the neck (towards the headstock), so I would consider this shape to be in a downwards direction.

Example 2

Moving on to the 5th string with our first finger on the 12th fret.

Example 3

Then our fourth finger starting on that same note playing through this shape:

Example 4

And finally, the 4th string 7th fret starting with the first finger.

Example 5

We don’t need to worry about the third finger starting on the 4th string, as that pattern was already covered in the first shape (example 1).

You may now be seeing how these shapes all interconnect:

Example 6

So by using our root notes as reference points, we can begin to feel more comfortable moving around the neck.

This also links to an idea I previously spoke about which covers how to think about octaves and where the roots notes are in relation to each other.

I hope you found that helpful. Next lesson we’ll be looking at how to practise this scale with a metronome, and how to generate sequences and phrases across different octaves, so stay tuned for that – see you next time!