Major Vs Minor Pentatonic Scale Guitar

Once you know the five major pentatonic scale shapes you automatically know the five minor pentatonic scale shapes.

Major vs minor pentatonic scale guitar. To understand how this works look at this example. Once again bending the minor third up to the major third is a nice bluesy sound. The major pentatonic scale does not have any clashing notes. The minor pentatonic scale has a minor third which may clash with the chord s minor third.

Both are shown below. Or the a minor blues scale. You can start with e minor pentatonic but the same notes and patterns can also produce g major pentatonic. 3 write down and play a c major scale vertical approach played across multiple strings 4 build a pentatonic minor scale on a single string.

The answer is that the pentatonic scale is either major or minor depending on which note is functioning as the tonic which means primary pitch called root when dealing with a chord. The pattern for the major and minor scales are different. We are going to learn the scale in the key of a so the a minor pentatonic scale. 6 play a vertical a major scale on the spot using your memorized major scale formula.

5 memorize the whole half step formulas for the major and natural minor scale. You as the the lead guitarist may want to keep that minor sound going on by playing the a minor pentatonic scale. This is used to solo over a blues or a song in the key of a minor and we will be learning a 12 bar blues in the key of a very soon so practise this scale now so you are ready to jam when we get to that. In a many cases you can use the minor pentatonic scale in a major key too.

Playing notes from the major pentatonic over a major key and playing notes from the minor pentatonic over a minor key will always be pleasing to the ear. If we take the notes in our major pentatonic scale and start on the 6th scale degree of the major scale you ll be playing in the relative minor key. If you were to play a c major pentatonic scale you would play the notes c d e g a. In this case the minor pentatonic scale contains the minor seventh so that note sounds great.

The tonic is determined by what you re playing over. At any point in your improvisation you can always try jumping back and forth between the major and the minor pentatonic blues scales. It all relates back to the major scale. Many times though a song in a major key can have soloing from both the pentatonic major and minor scales.

Learn about the similarities and differences between the major and minor pentatonic scales be sure to subscribe to our channel because we ll be adding at least one new free guitar. Guitar players often ask me what makes pentatonic scale patterns major or minor. There are major and minor pentatonic scales that share the same notes. Notice how both an e minor em chord and a g major chord fit.