In This Mini Series I Will Show You Everything You Need To Know About The Pentatonic Scale On The Guitar, So You Can Start Playing Guitar Solo & Do Basic Improvisation.
This Is A Learn To Play Guitar Solo Guide.
At The End Of This Mini Series You Will Have The Tools & The Know How To Practice Properly & Systematic, So You Can Solo All Over The Fretboard, If You Put In The Time & Effort.
A Great Way To Start This Journey Is By Learning The Pentatonic Scale.
So Let Me Briefly Explain What The Pentatonic Scale Is & How Our Endeavor Is Going To Look Like.
But Please, Don’t Be Scared If I Might Use Too Much Music Theory Here For Your Liking. I Promise That This Series Is For Beginners And It’s Designed To Be Highly Practical. I Just Want You To Understand The Big Picture. So It’s Ok, If You Don’t Understand Something At The First Attempt. Re-Watch Or Re-Read This Here Again After You’ve Completed The Whole Series. It’ll Make Total Sense.
Why The Pentatonic Scale Is Great To Start Soloing And Improvisation On The Guitar.
Let Me Get This Straight: Playing & Improvising Solo Is One Of The Hardest & Most Complex Skills A Musician Can Work on.
So We Need To Simplify. We Need To Simplify Drastically.
Let’s Take An Oversimplified Look, On What Improvisation And Playing Solo Is At It’s Core:
It’s Basically A Relation Between A Soloist And Some Kind Of Backing.
In Our Case The Solo Can Be A Lick, A Melody Or A Scale. And The Backings Are Most Likely Chords, Riffs Or A Bass Line.
Both Can Be Either Simple Or Complex Or Something In Between.
If We Start Our Improvisation Journey On A Backing Track With A Chord Progression Of Eight Different Chords, Then It’s Clearly Going To Be An Overwhelming Experience, Which Leads To Frustration.
Therefore It’s Best To Simplify Both:
The Soloing & The Backing.
And Here Comes The Part, Where The Pentatonic Scale Really Out Shines Other Scales, When It Comes To Beginner Friendliness.
Because It’s A Scale With A Comparatively Limited Amount Of Harmonical Interconnections.
Let Me Explain.
Understanding The Pentatonic Scale: The Scale To Chord Relationship
Chords & Scales Are Deeply Related.
Let Me Illustrate This With The Most Relevant Scale Of Western Music: The Major Scale.
This Is The C-Major Scale:
It’s Made Out Of Seven Notes. But The Most Important Thing Here Is This:
You Can Build On Each Note A Full-Fledged Chord By Using Only These Seven Notes And Stacking Them By Thrids.
The Result Is This Here:
That Looks Intimidating, Isn’t it?
And It Is! Do The Math On How Many Different Chord Progressions You Can Make Out Of These Seven Chords.
This Here Is The Essence Of More Than 300 Years Of Western Music In A Nutshell. So The Possibilities Are Literally Endless.
Therefore It’s Way Too Complex For Our Endeavor.
Let Me Illustrate The Scale To Chord Relation With The Pentatonic Scale:
That’s The Pentatonic Scale:
It’s A Five Note Scale.
But,
You Can’t Build A Full-Fledged Chord On Every Note. Because Of The Way The Notes Are Arranged.
If You Try To Build Chords, Like With The Major Scale, By Stacking Thirds, Then You Can Only Build Two Chords Out Of It.
And This Is Great! It Makes The Whole Improvisation Thing Way More Simple.
Because We Don’t Have To Worry About Chord Changes, If We Narrow Our Focus Down To Only A Few Possibilities Of The Pentatonic Scale And Its Limitations.
And This Is One Of The Reasons Why The Pentatonic Scale Is So Popular Among All Guitar Players.
Because It’s Easy And Practical.
This Is What The Pentatonic Scale For Guitar Mini Series Will Be About:
What Are The Practical Steps We Need To Undertake, To Make This Practical And Tangible?
It’s Basically A Three Step Process:
- Step One: We Need To Be Able To Play The Pentatonic Scale.
There Are Five Positions To Cover The Entire Fretboard. We Need To Know All Of Them.
2. Step Two: We Need To Be Able To Translate These 5 Positions Into Music. So We Will Learn How To Do That.
3. Step Three Is The Knowledge/Theory Part, Where We Learn Basic Theory And It’s Implementation.
Read Or Watch The Next Part If You Want To Learn How To Use The Pentatonic Scale And To Learn More About Improvisation.
In This Sense: Be Your Own Teacher & Take It Easy.
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Very good exercise