Do you memorize the whole minor pentatonic scale?

[wifiabc]

Is it necessary to memorize all 5 boxed patterns of the minor pentatonic scale ? In what way does not being able to memorize and play all the patterns limit you?
http://www.myguitarworkshop.com/Theory/ ... tterns.htm

If you can only manage 1 or 2 boxes, what type of songs can you play?

[Aquila Rossa]

Yes.
Learn to run through from posotion to position, working your way up and down the fretboard with lots of differennt techniques and as all the keys.

[sambrowne]

A more comprehensive answer might be that knowing a couple of box shapes will get you going with it, and then if you're really serious about your lead playing, get familiar with the entire neck. However, I tend to think in terms of the same octave shape across the neck - say if we're playing in A minor, I've got starting points at 5th fret of the E string, 7th fret of the D string, 12 th fret of the A string. The shape is essentially the same at each point if you play A, C, D, E, G in that order, with the only change happening on account of the B string's different tuning to the rest of the instrument.

Knowing a box shape will give you quite a bit to go on when you first take on lead.

[NZRS-Dave]

I would say learn as many as you can. I personally only really use notes out of the 4th position on that website. Don't beat yourself up if you can't remember them all, I think the most important thing to do is to incorporate it into your playing style and then move on to the next pattern but remember to retain the earlier patterns as much as you can.

I have ton of jamming progressions so you can practice the patterns over and over again.

You don't always use all the notes in the pattern either. Sometimes you will bend in and out of notes and therefore you won't need to use them all - other times the chord in the song will change and you jump to another pattern altogether.

But the most important thing ... is to enjoy the learning and not to be too hard on yourself.

I am (what I consider to be) a thoroughly average guitar player (in the lead respect) but others people claim that they'd love to be able to play like me. Which is weird, cos I'm actually a bass player (and we're all tortured guitarists at heart)

[Aquila Rossa]

I wrote this pentatonic exercise awhile back so I could practicwe playing through all the positions in one exersise. You will need Guitar pro 5 and unzip it. It's really good pactice, so start slow, alternate pick and use some palm muting. Only increase speed when you have it smooth without mistakes.

A minor pentatonic speed building.zip

(939 Bytes) Downloaded 100 times

[Hot_Grits]

Is it necessary to memorize all 5 boxed patterns of the minor pentatonic scale ? In what way does not being able to memorize and play all the patterns limit you?
http://www.myguitarworkshop.com/Theory/ ... tterns.htm

If you can only manage 1 or 2 boxes, what type of songs can you play?

Boxes 1 and 4 will cover most blues and rock soloing. Plenty of players get by with just those two.

But those other positions will enable you to cover more ground and link lines up. It'll also allow you to play the same notes in different places on the neck to get a thicker or thinner tone.

If the amount of information is daunting to you, think of boxes 2 and 5 not as whole new positions but more as extensions to the front and back of good old box 1. If you do that (and perhaps already know box 4) then you'll have four of the five boxes under your fingers in fairly short order. Then you could work on the final gap later once you feel you have the others down (or need to learn some BB King).

Sam's advice about learning octaves is very good too. Think of what parts of chords you can see in the shapes, relevant to what you're playing over.

[ChrisR]

I know and use them all. Funnily enough my least favourite position is position 4? :\

[Some Bozo]

My way of looking at it, there's only two patterns, covering an octave each - there's the one with your first finger on the root, and you play "to the right" of the root, e.g. the bottom half of the standard blues box, and the other pattern is your third or fourth finger on the root, and you play "to the left" of it, e.g. the top half of the standard blues box. The pattern will shift depending if and where it crosses the B string. So basically wherever I want to be on the neck, if I know where the root is, I can make either the "to the left" or "to the right" patterns off that on the fly, and adjust the shape if it crosses the B.

[RuBear]

I think it's a good idea to eventually get your head around it, however if I was learning it from the beginning I think I would actually take a bit more time, and make sure I practiced "just playing" inbetween. What I mean is that you don't want to get stuck only knowing the pentatonic patterns, well at least I don't.

If I started again the things I would do differently when learning them are:

1.For every hour of practising/learning pentatonic scales play some completely seperate and different stuff. Maybe practise a particular technique or write a song or whatever, but without using the pentatonics your practising.

2. Learn the position of the other two notes that make up the natural minor/aeolian. This is kind of like learning another whole 5 positions, except that learning one helps you learn the other because there is just two extra notes.

3. DON'T learn them as seperate positions. Learn the notes then practise using all of the positions you have learnt so far, maybe improvising over something. Try to make sure your not playing with each shape before changing to the next, rather try to use all the positions you know seamlessly.

4. Kind of relates to 3, learn them in more than one way. Eg. Sams example above where you just learn the basic shape and learn all of the starting points and so you can figure it all out from there. One of my favourite ways of practising these shapes is to play 3 notes on each string without playing the same note twice. Also try learning all of the notes on just two strings at a time so that you get a good understanding of how the patterns link together etc.

5. As you learn, I think it is worthwhile to make sure you know what note your playing at every step of the scale, and preferably what degree of the scale that your currently playing in that note is.

6. Don't be afraid to learn your own way if you think you know better, including ignoring all of the above. It's always important to understand how you learn and what gets you to your desired end result the easiest.

[Danger Mouse]

I know and use them all. Funnily enough my least favourite position is position 4? :\

I know and use them all as well. Just went through a phase about 10 years ago of wanting to know every note on the fretboard for my most commonly used scales, didn't realise there were numbered positions until a few years ago. Got as far as minor pentatonic and natural minor, then lost interest (mainly because I play rock and metal, so my soloing only really needs those 2 scales ).

[Rog]

The way I see it, there is only ONE pattern there.

Its very simply 3 boxes of 2 frets spacing, followed by 2 boxes of 3 frets spacing, followed by 3 boxes of 2 frets spacing - ad infinitum.

The only tricks lie in knowing where in that pattern to start, as its not always at the beginning of the boxes and realising that due to std guitar tuning, you have to shift the pattern by one fret when you encounter the 2 top strings.

Then again, I do have a habit of trying to simplify things .....

[calling card]

My way of looking at it, there's only two patterns, covering an octave each - there's the one with your first finger on the root, and you play "to the right" of the root, e.g. the bottom half of the standard blues box, and the other pattern is your third or fourth finger on the root, and you play "to the left" of it, e.g. the top half of the standard blues box. The pattern will shift depending if and where it crosses the B string. So basically wherever I want to be on the neck, if I know where the root is, I can make either the "to the left" or "to the right" patterns off that on the fly, and adjust the shape if it crosses the B.

This what I do too, listening more than watching the pattern or fragments of, finding some good bits.

[Tsuken]

My way of looking at it, there's only two patterns, covering an octave each - there's the one with your first finger on the root, and you play "to the right" of the root, e.g. the bottom half of the standard blues box, and the other pattern is your third or fourth finger on the root, and you play "to the left" of it, e.g. the top half of the standard blues box. The pattern will shift depending if and where it crosses the B string. So basically wherever I want to be on the neck, if I know where the root is, I can make either the "to the left" or "to the right" patterns off that on the fly, and adjust the shape if it crosses the B.

Now I'm tuned in 4ths I don't even have to adjust for the B Learn once, play everywhere.

Anyway, rather than (or perhaps as well as) learning bunches of boxes, I reckon it's best to learn where the notes are. I don't like to think in boxes, and try to avoid it as much as possible. Even when I'm staying in one bit of the fretboard, I try to think about the notes I want to play, rather than what box position is there.

[hamo]

The great thing about music theory is that it lets me get away with being really lazy

If you know the notes on the fingerboard, you're away.

Minor scale:
A B C D E F G
Tone - semitone - tone - tone - semitone - tone - tone (back to the A)

Minor pentatonic:
A C D E G
Minor third - tone - tone - minor third - tone


Umm, So I guess ultimately you want to join all the patterns up and play it all over the neck, but I wouldn't worry about it until you have the basic musical understanding of what's going on with the scale. When you have that, fingering is a piece of piss

So for a theory n00b like me, what makes the A and E minor thirds?

[Aquila Rossa]

A thing to learn to do is play the extentions and the standard positions on the top 3 strings as one "box". Doug Aldrich, EVH, and Zakk do this alot for faster 3 note per string licks.
Another important thing is to learn how to make the minor pentatonic sound Major. The most common way is to resolve or build around the C as the root if you are you are playing in A minor pentatonic to get a C major feel, the other is to drop back to the F# Minor Pentatonic and play the A as the root for a A Major feel.
Practice bending notes within the scale also, especially 1 1/2 step bends like bending the B string on the 10th fret to the B and then up to the C to get that Watchtower/Weeping Guitar effect, or half step bends to get that Still got the Blues effect, eg 17th fret B string up to the F.
Vibrato, vibrato, vibrato. Rock guitar is often mostly blues licks with extra dist/od, attitude/feel, speed, and wide ass vibrato.