Pentatonic Scale #1

Pentatonic scales are most scales that are used in all sorts of popular music such as Rock, Blues, Jazz, and Pops.

So many melodies are made of a pentatonic scale.

You can play awesome phrases with pentatonic scales on the guitar, so practice them hard until you can play them without even thinking amount them.

Contents

Major pentatonic

How the pentatonic scales are made is described.

Take first five notes from twelve perfect fifth sounds from C, or remove tritons F and B from C major scale and you get C major pentatonic scale

The major pentatonic scale comprises root, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th.

Minor pentatonic

There is also a minor pentatonic scale.
C minor pentatonic scale comprises C・E♭・F・G・B♭.

The minor pentatonic scale comprises root, ♭3rd, 4th, 5th, and ♭7th.

Let’s go back to Chapter 4. Do you remember Relative minor? Major and minor are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, C major pentatonic scale has its own relative minor; A minor pentatonic.

As described above, minor pentatonic scale comprises root, ♭3rd, 4th, 5th, and ♭7th. Thus, when you play C major pentatonic scale from A, you get A minor pentatonic scale. This is relative scale.

C major pentatonic
A minor pentatonic

D major pentatonic
B minor pentatonic

E major pentatonic
C# minor pentatonic

etc.

As described above, the relative minor also applies not only to chords but also to scales.

Major sixth from C major
Major sixth note from C is A

Minor third from A minor
Minor third from A is C

Therefore, when you play A minor pentatonic scale on C, CM7, and C7 chords, the scale matches the chord.

Let’s actually play it!