-
Minor and major Pentatonic scales
I’m a little confused about this week’s challenge (Can’t Find My Way Home). The Wednesday scale patterns are not the same as the Pentatonic scales shown in the Jamming 101 course. There the G string shows a jump from, say, the 5th fret to the 8th fret (in A minor; a 3-fret jump in any case). In today’s Improvisation challenge, we are going from the 6th to the 8th (a 2-fret jump). Is it because we start on the A string instead of the Low E?
I’m not sure I understand the pentatonic pattern in any case. I can’t figure out what the three highlighted finger positions in the Jamming 101 charts are referring to.
-
5 Replies
-
Hi @barbaram The major pentatonic starts with the pinky on the root note (1st note of scale), whereas the minor pentatonic starts with the index finger on the root note. The pattern is the same for both, but the beginning note will differ for each.
-
@Loraine is a good way to look it for finger patterns but to go a little deeper @BarbaraM
I look at it as:
Minor Pentatonic- 1 3b 4 5 7b (Excludes 2 and 6)
Major Pentatonic- 1 2 3 5 6 (Excludes 4 and 7)
With 1 as the root note so… for some examples …
Dm Pentatonic- D F G A C < C A G F D
Am Pentatonic- A C D E G < G E D C A
Em Pentatonic- E G A B D < E D B A G
D Major Pentatonic-D E F# A B < B A F# E D
C major Pentatonic- C D E G A < A G E D C
G major Pentatonic- G A B D E < E D B A G
Wow. That awakened my inner number cruncher!
-
Hmmm, neither of you really answered my question. Loraine, you tell me which finger to start on the root note, depending on whether it’s the major or minor pentatonic scale, but where do you go from there? I have the chart from the Jamming 101 course (Quick Reference Jam Sheet), and the tab for “Somebody Holds the Key” from this week’s Can’t Find My Way Home challenge. And the scales are different as far as which fret to use when going up the scales. Albert_d, I cannot make sense of your answer either, though I understand in a way how you are trying to explain it. I don’t know what the notes are on each string and fret, though I can work them out given time. And yes I did take FW, but only understood about half of it.
What I want to know is why the fretting is different, if it matters, and which one is correct?
-
The difference is due to standard tuning versus Drop D tuning.
“The pentatonic scale shape differs for drop D tuning and standard tuning on the guitar because of the difference in the string pitch tuning: The strings are E, A, D, G, B, and E, from lowest to highest.
D tuning: The strings are D, A, D, G, B, and E, from lowest to highest. The lowest string is tuned down a whole step from E to D.
The pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave, and there are five shapes for the pentatonic scale. The major and minor pentatonic scales are the same group of notes, but the root note is different.”
“In drop D tuning (DADGBE), every note that was on the 6th string is now 2 frets higher. The patterns on the other 5 strings are the same.”
Here’s a good resource. https://andyrobinetguitar.com/pentatonic-scale/
andyrobinetguitar.com
The Pentatonic Scale: A Complete Guide For Guitar - andyrobinetguitar
Learn and master the pentatonic scale on the guitar with this complete guide including shapes, exercises, licks and theory.
-
Ah, thank you, Loraine! I suspected it had to be something like that.
-
Log in to reply.