BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

Friday, February 4, 2011

Pentatonic Guitar Scales : Essentials For Lead Guitar

By Nick Dillon


Pentatonic guitar scales are commonly the starting point for many guitarists when first learning lead guitar. They are highly useful for soloing and can be applied to many different genres of music, including blues, rock and country.

By definition, all pentatonic guitar scales have five notes. The two common pentatonic scales used in western music are the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic scales. A similar scale to the minor pentatonic scale is the commonly used blues scale.

The minor pentatonic scale is commonly used in rock and blues music but is not limited to these genres. The minor pentatonic is a staple for many guitar solos, and it is generally a very popular scale used for guitar soloing. The minor pentatonic scale is composed of: root, flat 3, 4, 5 and flat 7 scale degrees.

The minor pentatonic can be converted to the blues scale by simply adding a flat 5. This is also a very commonly used scale for not just blues but for many other types of music. When referring to pentatonics for guitar, often the blues scale will be included even though technically it is not a pentatonic scale. It is comprised of : root, flat 3, 4, flat 5, 5 and flat 7. This scale may well be the most popular scale for soloing with the guitar.

A versatile and useful scale is the major pentatonic scale. The scale steps are root, 2, 3, 5, 6 degrees. This scale is also frequently used in country music and blues but again is not limited to these styles. If we take the two of these scales we find they are normally used jointly when soloing over a twelve bar blues together with the flat 5, mentioned previously, from the blues scale.

To learn lead guitar it is crucial to learn the major pentatonic and the minor pentatonic guitar scales. Both scales can be used for guitar solos in almost any style of music and contain the same notes that the diatonic modes are formed with. These scales are generally a good starting point when learning guitar soloing.




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