Lesson #8  (long awaited.. :P )- Pentatonics

finally, i have time to sit down and type up another "lesson" ..
sorry for the delay... :)

anyways, you ask "what the hell is a pentatonic?" .. and i say
"it's a long complicated word that describes a pretty simple idea 
and is a good beginning into soloing" ... that about sums it up.. :)

well, that's the end of this lesson, and next time i will..

(just kidding.. heheh) ... ;)

try to remember back to the idea of Barre chords, and how you could
simply move 1 shape up the neck and you'll get a different chord.
now, the basic pentatonic uses the same idea. it has its own shape
(just like a barre chord), and its own root note too! ... 
pentatonics use a LOT of the same ideas as barre chords, so if you
have that lesson down packed, you will just breeze through this one.
:)

ok, now into the nitty-gritty stuff... the pentatonic scale...
here is just one of the shapes of a pentatonic scale:

e--0-----3
b--0-----3
g--0--2---
d--0--2---
a--0--2---
e--0-----3     <--- root is open E string

since the root is the open E string, you could call this  an 
E pentatonic... the main thing to see here is that it is really
quite easy to play this scale... try playing it like this at 
first:

e---------------------------0--3
b----------------------0--3-----
g-----------------0--2----------
d------------0--2---------------
a-------0--2--------------------
E--0--3-------------------------

let's name these notes:

E, G, A, B, D, E, G, A, B... wait, i'm starting to see a pattern..

E G A B D are all the notes there are in this pentatonic scale. they
keep repeating over and over again... :) ... so that makes this pretty
simple...

now, like i said before, this shape can be moved... so lets say we 
want to play a G pentatonic for some reason, we can just move the
root up to the 3rd fret, and keeping the shape, we have this:

e--3-----6
b--3-----6
g--3--5---
d--3--5---
a--3--5---
E--3-----6

same shape, just "transposed" up (transposing basically means to 
simply move the shape up or down a number of steps... ) ...

now how do you utilize this information? ... well, right now, you 
can play around with them... try mixing it up a little bit...
the general idea to begin with is to try soloing with the pentatonic
of the chord that is playing... so, if you are playing a G chord,
try playing over it with a G pentatonic. :) and so on...

in the next lesson, i'll show you how to expand the pentatonic
so you will be soloing ALL over the fretboard.. :) ..

**INTERESTING STUFF**

ok, i've had a couple requests on info for playing "bluesy" type
stuff, and thought this lesson would be a good place to place some
of that info in..

using the basic idea of the pentatonic scale above, there is a 
"blues" scale that you can build on top of the pentatonic, and 
it's really easy... here is the shape:

e--0-------3
b--0-------3
g--0---2---3
d--0---2----
a--0-1-2----
E--0-------3

and you can move that shape up the neck too... try playing around
with it with a swing beat, and you'll be able to pull out some
recognizable blues riffs... :)


that's all for now, but stay tuned for the next one... which won't
take me months to complete... hopefully... ;)

until then, keep on strumming!

proud to be a guitar freak...
Scott,    scottf@scs.unr.edu