Confession #40 - Pentatonic Scales (Part 1)

Pentatonic scales are very commonly used in rock and roll, so you'll want to have a good understanding of them. Fortunately, they are not that difficult to understand or to play.  That's one of the reason for their popularity.

THE MAJOR PENTATONIC SCALE

Penta comes from the Greek language, and means 5, so penta-tonic means 5 tones  Thus a pentatonic sale has, yes you guessed it, 5 tones.

Which 5 tones you ask?  Well, take the C major scale (see Confession #8 - Learn the Major Scale!) and leave out the F and the B and you get the C major pentatonic scale:

[The numbers below the note names are the scale formula (see Confession #27 - Learn the Minor Scale!)]


C Major Scale

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
  W   W   H   W   W   W   H

The numbers below the note names are the scale formula (see Confession #27 - Learn the Minor Scale!)


C Major Pentatonic Scale

C - D - E - - - G - A - - - C
1   2   3       5   6       8
  W   W    H+W    W    W+H

Major Pentatonic Pattern #1

You may have already learned this pattern.  If not, take the time to learn it as Pattern #1 is very commonly used.

Major Pentatonic Pattern #1
(Click to Enlarge)

Observe that the root note C is at the 7th fret of your sixth string.  The A at the 5th fret of the sixth string is part of the scale, but I've shown it in dashed lines as it is below the root note.


THE MINOR PENTATONIC SCALE

Let's do the same thing again, but this time start with the A minor scale (see Confession #39 - Back to the Minor Scale!), which is the relative minor scale to the C major scale.

A Minor Scale

A - B - C  - D - E - F  - G  - A
1   2   3b   4   5   6b   7b   8
  W   H    W   W   H    W    W


A Minor Pentatonic Scale

A - - - C  - D - E - -  - G  - A
1       3b   4   5        7b   8
   W+H     W   W    H+W     W


Minor Pentatonic Pattern #1

Again, this pattern will probably look familiar.

Minor Pentatonic Pattern #1
(Click to Enlarge)

Observe that the root note A is at the 5th fret of your sixth string.

I've also shown the Am pentatonic extended box.  We'll discuss where these notes come from in a future confession.  For now, ignore the notes in the dashed lines.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "It's the same pattern as the major pentatonic scale!"  And you would be correct.  The A minor pentatonic scale is the relative minor scale to the C major pentatonic scale, so they do use the same notes.  The difference is which note you treat as the root note of the scale.
So how do you know which scale is which?  If you want to play the minor pentatonic scale, then the root note is under your index finger. If you want to play the major pentatonic scale, then the root note is under your fourth finger.  Note that minor and index both have the letter i in them.  This is the trick to remembering which scale is which.


OBSERVATIONS

Observe that there are only two notes per string, which makes these pentatonic scale patterns easy to play.  This is part of the reason they are so popular!

Observe that by eliminating the notes F and B, we eliminated the half steps from the standard major and minor scale.  If you can remember this fact, then you can easily build a pentatonic scale in any key,  Write out the major or minor scale for that key, and then eliminate the half steps. Boom! There's the pentatonic scale. That's easier then remembering the scale formula.

Next Week's Confession - 12 Bar Blues! 

Confession #39 - Back to the Minor Scale! (It's all Relative!)

Previously, we discussed the C major scale (Confession #8 - Learn the Major Scale!) and the C minor scale (Confession #27 - Learn the Minor Scale!).

You've probably heard that the A minor scale is the relative minor scale to the C major scale.  In this week's confession, we'll explore just what the heck that means.

THE RELATIVE MINOR SCALE

Most lessons I've seen on the minor scale start with a discussion on the A minor scale.  They probably do this because the A minor scale doesn't contain any sharps or flats and thus is a little easier to understand.

I purposely avoided this in Confession #27 - Learn the Minor Scale! and stuck to the key of C because I believe the difference between the major scale and the minor scale are better illustrated when both are presented starting on the same root note, like this:

C - D - E  - F - G - A  - B  - C
C - D - Eb - F - G - Ab - Bb - C

That said, it is important to take a look at the A minor scale because it is the relative minor scale to the C major scale.

To understand what that means, lets' take a look at the A minor scale.  The notes are:

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A


The first thing that you probably noticed is that there are no sharps or flats and that the notes are all the same notes as the C major scale.  So how is the A minor scale different from the C major scale?  Well, the notes are all the same, but the difference is which note you start the scale on.

This difference is best illustrated by seeing how the pattern of whole steps and half steps changes when we start playing on A instead of C.


Here are two octaves of the C major scale:

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

  W   W   H   W   W   W   H   W   W   H   W   W   W   H

When we play from C to C, the pattern of whole steps and half steps is: W-W-H-W-W-W-H


Here is the A minor scale that is hidden in the two octaves of the C major scale:

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

  W   W   H   W   W   W   H   W   W   H   W   W   W   H

When we play from A to A, the pattern of whole steps and half steps is: W-H-W-W-H-WW


Again, observe that there are no sharps or flats in the A minor scale because it consists of all the same notes as the C major scale.  Also note that it is the same pattern of whole steps and half steps, we just start in a different place in that pattern.  For the technically curious readers out there, the minor scale is known as the aeolian mode.

You may be wondering, can our ears really hear a difference based on which note we start on?  The answer is yes, they can!

Go back to Confession #16 - Finger 3-4 Independence! (Exercise #1)  and listen to the video.  The notes played are all natural notes (i.e. there are no sharps or flats), so they are all the same notes as you'll find in the C major scale.  But the lick doesn't have that happy major scale feel to it.  This is because the lick starts on an open E and repeats that note frequently during the lick.  This causes us to hear this lick as being in E phrygian.  Don't worry about what that means for now.  The point is that we can use the notes of the C major scale to play something that doesn't sound like C major.

Listen to 5 Days in May by Blue Rodeo.  The chords for the intro verse are Em, D, Am, C  and then G, F, C and D.  At first it looks like the song is in the key of G major because the principal chords in G major are:

G - Am - Bm - C - D - Em - F#o

But the song doesn't have a happy major chord feel to it.  That's because it's in the key of E minor, which is the relative minor scale to G major.  The song starts on the Em chord and that affects they way our ears hear everything else that follows it.


It is  because the A minor scale uses all the same notes as the C major scale that is called the relative minor scale.


FINDING THE RELATIVE MINOR SCALE

If you want to know what the relative minor scale is for any particular major scale, there's a simple trick for figuring that out.  The root note of the relative minor is 3 frets lower than the root note for the major scale.

For example, the 8th fret of your sixth string is a C.  Move down 3 frets to the 5th fret and you'll find an A.  A is the relative minor to C major.

Next Week's Confession - Pentatonic Scales (Part 1)