1. The pentatonic formula – 1 b3 4 5 b7

2. The Pentatonic Box Pattern (Ok, I lied about locking away the five positions, we’ll be needing just this one)

   

3. Jam Track in A Minor

4. The ‘A’ Root Notes

   

5. A few easy scale patterns

   

Okay, enough of the holiday metaphors, what is this all about and how will it propel your pentatonic scale playing?

Well firstly this idea is much easier to work with than the common five pentatonic positions. The few easy patterns above still cover virtually the entire fretboard once they are pieced together and can be put to musical use easier than the traditional five position method. Secondly and most importantly, it will almost force you into letting the scale dictate the pattern rather than allow the patterns to dictate the scale – probably the biggest difference between guitarists stuck in the pentatonic box and those having total control of the scale across the entire fretboard.

This isn’t any kind of groundbreaking new method nor is it a replacement for other methods, just a kick in the right direction to help you see scale patterns and positions for what they are … the notes belonging to a five note pentatonic scale and not a set of fixed ‘patterns of the moment’.

Like everything else it’s up to you to put it to practice. I’m going to give you a few ideas to get going but it’s your job to do the thinking and piece it all together, do this and I guarantee you’ll start to realise that using the whole fretboard isn’t really that difficult.

Learning The Notes

Guitarists with great command of scales and the fretboard know a few things. Things that take a lot of hard work and time to master. Among these are all of the notes on the fretboard, the CAGED chords and other chord types, chord and scale notes and intervals, music theory knowledge and the structural and theoretical relationship between all of these things.

The more of this you know the better but you can’t learn it all overnight, it can take years. Right now it doesn’t matter but one thing there is absolutely no substitute for is knowing the notes on the fretboard. If you can’t find them quickly then moving forward and getting out of the rut is going to be impossible without resorting to memorised patterns, scale runs and counting frets from a fixed point of reference – analogous to having a piece of elastic tied between your fingers and the pentatonic box, the further away you stray from it the harder it gets and you are constantly being pulled back to it.

The good news is learning the notes isn’t as hard as you might think. Practicing all of this in one key only is the best way to quickly learn the notes. We are only using the ‘A’ notes as our reference for every pattern and as there’s only one on each string between every twelve frets, you can get used to these confidently in just a few days. Master this technique in just one key and you should find everything suddenly making a whole lot more sense as you see how the scale ties together across the fretboard. After this it’s just a matter of practicing in the other keys to learn the other notes. Enough banter, time to start practicing!

Exercise 1.

Take the first octave of the pentatonic box and move it around the neck to start on the ‘A’ note of each string. Remember the scale sequence is 1 b3 4 5 b7. Even though the pattern itself changes on some strings, get used to the fact the note order is the same, it’s only the string tuning that changes the actual shape of the pattern, the scale sequence doesn’t alter.

Play along with the jam track and get used to jumping randomly between these patterns. A few days and you should be able to do it fluently without pausing.

Exercise 2

The first exercise dealt with single octave pentatonic patterns ascending from the root. Now do the same thing again but this time use the highest four notes of the pentatonic box and jam along randomly moving between the strings. Like before, remember it’s the same sequence of notes even though the pattern changes slightly, this time only in one place.

Exercise 3

For this final exercise we are using a simple Amin7 arpeggio pattern in just three positions starting on the sixth, fifth and third strings. This keeps things simple and still manages to cover a large amount of the neck when combined with the patterns from the previous exercises. Note that a minor seventh arpeggio is only one note short of the full pentatonic scale. If used sparingly this works well with the pentatonic scale while at the same time can help get you out of the habit of stepping through scale patterns in predictable sequences. Like before, fire up a jam track and spend some time randomly jumping between these patterns until you can find and play them fluently.

That pretty much sums it up. Play around with all three exercises everyday until you are comfortable with them and can jump to every ‘A’ note without hesitating, combine them and mix them up randomly. Learn the scale intervals in each pattern even if they don’t help you right now, they certainly will later. Get used to sliding and moving between the patterns, it won’t take long before you can seamlessly join them all into one large scale up and down the neck. If you practice this everyday you’ll have come a long way in just a month or so. By this time you will find learning the notes on the fretboard for every key get’s easier and quicker, find jam tracks for various keys and play about with the same ideas for all of them. After a while you should be adding your own ideas and discovering new ways to play about with the pentatonic scale. The five common positions will suddenly become easy as you see how these smaller patterns overlap and integrate with them. The diagrams below give you an idea of this, study them and work the five patterns back into your practice routine.

The single octave patterns from exercise one

The four note patterns from exercise two

Minor seventh arpeggios from exercise three

All of the above combined and including the full pentatonic box position 1. As you can see, virtually all of the notes have been covered.

Now go practice!

There seems to be a lot of confusion about arpeggios for those who have never played around with them. Many beginners assume that an arpeggio is played by holding a chord shape and picking the notes separately instead of strumming. Now that certainly is an arpeggio but it’s not the only way to play one and in the case of playing lead guitar the arpeggio is played more like you would play a scale. The only difference between a chord and an arpeggio is that the chord plays the chord tones simultaneously while an arpeggio plays them sequentially. The A minor chord consists of the notes A, C and E and you can play these notes any how you like, as long as they are not picked simultaneously, they can be played in any order for any note length, staccato or legato it doesn’t matter as long as you are making any phrase by picking one note at a time then you will be playing an A minor arpeggio.

The TABS and diagrams below show a few different ways you could play with arpeggios.

Hold down a bar chord and individually pick each note up and then back down again. Practice this by letting all the notes ring out by keeping fingers pressed down and then practice lifting the hand slightly after each note is picked so as to mute the strings, keep the fingers pressed only for the duration of the note.

Similar to the above but playing note sequences

Extension of the same idea, this can be played a bit more like you would pick notes of a scale pattern rather than holding down a chord shape.

Arpeggio using just the three notes in one octave

Three notes on just two strings played as a lick

Arpeggios like this are often played at high speed using sweeping techniques but they don’t have to be, you can play them at slower speeds. What’s important is that you play it more like a scale, in other words lift each finger to mute each note after it has been picked so that it doesn’t ring over the next note

Playing a minor arpeggio will result in a sound that maintains the characteristics of the minor chord which is quite obvious as you are just playing the chord tones. If you were to play an A minor arpeggio as a phrase or lick over an A minor chord then it is always going to sound like it fits, however a lot of blues and rock music will have a solo that is tonally dominated by the minor pentatonic scale throughout the solo. With this in mind consider that the min7 arpeggio is actually the same thing as a minor pentatonic scale but with one note missing. The notes in A minor pentatonic are A, C, D, E, G and the notes in an Amin7 chord are A, C, E, G…. A lot of solos based on the minor pentatonic scale will have a minor flavour to them over the entire chord progression even though the minor chord itself might not be present in the progression, this is because the minor pentatonic scale is used so often for soloing that we have kind of got used to the sound it creates. The minor pentatonic scale itself could actually be considered an Amin7add11 arpeggio because that’s the chord you get if you add a D to an Amin7 chord.

Playing an Amin or Amin7 arpeggio will sometimes work anywhere over chord progression that would normally use an A minor pentatonic for a solo but there are also times that doing this will clash over certain chord changes so you’ll need to let your ear be the judge, you will only find these things out by experimenting. Getting used to arpeggios can lead to some great ideas and really help you get better acquainted with the neck. They are also good for helping you get away from running sequentially up and down scale patterns by injecting some larger intervals into your playing. The next few diagrams show some Amin7 patterns that you should get familiar with but also spend some time to see how many you can find yourself.

All the notes belonging to Am7

One of the biggest problems with scale positions is if you’re not careful you might end up thinking about them in positions relative to each other, rather than independent scales. Whatever method you use, one thing that is very important is you always know where you are playing on the neck at any given moment. For example if you are playing position three and you only got there by counting up five frets from position one then this is a habit you need to get out of. If you happen to be playing A minor pentatonic in position three starting on the tenth fret then you should also be aware of where the root notes are within that shape as well as triads or any of the common chord shapes inside or within close proximity to it. Knowing these kind of target tones is the key to making your solos sound musical.

Position 3 A minor pentatonic starting on tenth fret

Root notes inside and within close proximity of the scale pattern

A minor triad inside the scale pattern

Some of the D minor (red) and A minor (green) form chords cross over into position 3

The above diagrams give you the idea, the main point is to always be looking for and knowing what’s around your fingers. There is nothing wrong with knowing and using the scale patterns themselves but thinking more about what is contained within and around them is very important if you want control of the neck. Obviously the same applies to all five positions.

Getting around the B string tuning.

This is an idea that takes a little getting used to but once you’re familiar with it, it can be a very powerful method for working your way around the neck and it outlines another importance of knowing all the notes on the fretboard. I’ll describe this all in the key of A using the minor pentatonic scale but the same method can be applied to any scale type. Breaking scale patterns into small chunks and moving them around is a great way to get familiar with a scale across the entire neck and get you away from thinking of scales as being full six string box patterns only.

We already know that the minor pentatonic scale contains only five notes so it’s quite obvious that all the shapes and positions are nothing more than repeats of the same five note sequences. This next idea thinks more in terms of small patterns repeated throughout the neck. The only thing that complicates it is the string tuning offset at the B string so first lets consider for a moment that all the strings on the guitar are tuned evenly.

In standard guitar tuning each string is tuned five semitones (half steps) apart, other than the interval between the G and B string.

All string intervals are five semitones except between the G to B string

If we now tuned the strings so that they are evenly tuned five semitones apart then a few things would change because the B and adjacent E string would need to be tuned up by one semitone (the B to E string interval is already tuned five frets apart so if the B string goes up then the adjacent E string will also have to go up with it). What we would end up with is a tuning that goes E A D G C F and any chord or pattern that we already know would have to change. Therefore the standard box pattern minor pentatonic would need to drop down by one fret on the B and E string to compensate.

Standard box pattern in standard tuning and what it would look like if all strings were tuned evenly spaced five semitones apart.

This is where the A notes would end up

It would now become a very easy task to take the first octave of the standard minor pentatonic shape and move it to start on any one of the root notes without needing to change the shape.

Obviously when we get down to the B string we start to run out of strings, we still keep the same pattern but we only use the first four notes of it. Likewise we could start it on the highest string and only need the first two notes.

Lets now take this one step further and think about how a pattern can move in four directions from any root note. It can move to or from the right or left ascending or descending like this.

This means that we can learn just two small patterns and as long as we know where the root note is we can move from that note either up or down to the left or right. Even though this is four directions it’s only necessary to know two small patterns.

For example this one octave pattern can start from the lowest note and ascend up the octave or descend down.

If we now take the first part of position five we can find another pattern that can be used for left ascending or right descending. For this pattern we will use eight notes to keep it symmetrical and make it easier to remember. This obviously goes against what I said earlier about all patterns should start from the root so again, when practicing these kind of patterns, start from the root, go up and then work back down and vice versa.

And here it is played ascending and descending, starting and ending on the root.

With these two patterns we can now go to any root note and play from it in any of four directions.

Between any 12 frets you will only find six root notes, one on each string. By knowing just the location of the root notes and the two patterns you have enough information to play the minor pentatonic scale across entire neck.

For these examples remember we are still considering all the strings to be tuned evenly. Study the diagram below and you will see how the entire neck is covered simply by repeats of the same two patterns centred around the root notes. I have outlined as many as I can without it becoming too cluttered but you should have no problem seeing they are all there.

This shows us how simple it would be if the strings were all tuned evenly. A system like this can be very helpful when combined with the ideas already discussed and help you to gain good control of a scale.

Okay so this is all well and good but how does it help us in standard tuning?. Well, it’s not really much more difficult once you understand how the strings are tuned and the whole thing is made much easier as long as you only start with patterns that belong to the evenly tuned strings E A D and G as this gives us a constant to work from (which we have already done).

Basically, we can take any part of any scale pattern we like as long as it belongs to the bottom four strings and move it anywhere on the neck in standard tuning by following two rules.

1. Any part of the pattern that crosses the G to the B string ascending needs to move up one fret

2. Any part of the pattern that crosses the B to the G string ascending needs to move down one fret

Rather than attempt to over explain this it is probably easier to get the idea by studying the following series of diagrams, we start by taking the first pattern and moving it to start on each string in turn.

Note in diagram 5 there is no need to shift anything as the B to E spacing is still tuned five semitones. Also note that diagrams 3 and 4 could be viewed as descending and shifting down as you cross the B to G string as shown below.

Using pattern two

This same idea could also be used with larger patterns but sticking to the patterns belonging to the E A D G strings prevents it getting messy and confusing because some of the pattern already crosses the unevenly tuned part. If you move the full standard box pattern to start on the fifth string then you have to think more, for example in the diagram below, the dotted section of position 1 already crosses the G-B strings so it needs to be compensated on both the B and E strings when it is moved. Reusing patterns from the evenly tuned part not only keeps it simple but also helps you to think more about the scale notes rather than the pattern, although this might not seem obvious until you get used to it.

Moving some of these patterns around can require a little more thought than others but a little bit of effort and practice can make this method become very easy for a large percentage of pattern shifts. I have been using ideas like this for quite some time and can move any pattern around the neck in this way with very little thought. Like everything else you don’t get used to it overnight but once you will find it a great way to quickly think your way around an unfamiliar scale and it should speed up the process of learning new scales across the fretboard. All the common scale positions should still be learnt but combined with this idea you should find yourself learning and remembering them become a lot easier.

If you have any trouble trying to get your head around any of this then you might find it easier to first play around with smaller groups of four notes and then when you get the hang of that move on to six note symmetrical patterns.

For example, take this four note pattern here…

…and move it around the neck to start on each of these root notes.

By using only a two string pattern of four notes you can see that you only need to think about the string offset where the pattern crosses the G – B string as outlined in the orange box. Also note that these four notes alone make up an Amin7 chord so this method could be used as a means of quickly locating chord tones.

The next few diagrams show how to play about with a symmetrical pattern, this helps you get used to the idea and prepare you better for when using larger patterns like the ones we first looked at.

Take this symmetrical pattern from the standard box position and move it to other root notes across the neck

If you are finding your ideas limited when playing with any of the pentatonic positions other than position 1 then you might find you can jump start your creativity by taking a lick you already know and replicate it in another position. Unless you are new to lead playing it is pretty likely that you already have a pretty good sounding lick that uses this one of the outlined parts of the standard box position.

The diagrams below show the first part located in each of the five positions, note that position four only contains four notes so you might need to adjust your lick to only use four notes.

These diagrams show the second pattern, this time position 3 only contains four of the notes so a different lick is required again.

The more you practice and play about with ideas like this the better. So far we have covered quite a few different ideas but don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed by any of it, make sure you practice them regularly and let things just fall into place on their own, what might seem like a lot of information right now will soon become second nature to you.

Master The Pentatonics Part Five

It’s also important to know the placement of all the chords and intervals within the pentatonic shapes. Take some time to look through and learn all of these in the diagrams below. Don’t worry if all of this so far seems like too much too learn, just start making yourself aware of these things when you are playing the pentatonic scales and dedicate some of your practice time to it. This is a lot of information to take in and you won’t learn it overnight. The good news is that after a while you will find it’s actually not as bad as it first might appear because once you get going you will find all of these ideas interact with each other and you don’t actually need to learn them all as individual patterns. You should find that before you are even halfway through you will almost know the rest of it without having to learn them.

Minor Pentatonic Intervals

Major Pentatonic Intervals

What follows are some triad and chord shapes that can be found within the five patterns. Associating a chord shape with a scale pattern is another good method to find your way around the neck quickly, there’s no need to learn them all at once, you will probably do better to focus on one at a time and just start using that shape regularly until you get used to it being connected with the chord forms.

Not all of the possibilities are listed but just a few examples so spend some time to see how many more you can find.

Position 1 minor pentatonic patterns

Position 2 minor pentatonic patterns

Position 3 minor pentatonic patterns

Position 4 minor pentatonic patterns

Position 5 minor pentatonic patterns

Position 1 major pentatonic patterns

Position 2 major pentatonic patterns

Position 3 major pentatonic patterns

Position 4 major pentatonic patterns

Position 5 major pentatonic patterns

Master The Pentatonics Part Four

All of the previous chord forms were built on triads. A triad is simply a chord containing three notes. The common chord forms that use more than three strings therefore have some of these notes repeated. What we want to do now is take a look at these triads across the neck in groups of three notes only, learning these are extremely useful.

Earlier on I talked about all chords and scales being based on the major scale and the notes in the major scale are numbered one to seven starting from the root. We can create any major triad by simply taking the 1st, 3rd and 5th scale degrees (intervals) from the major scale and using them to form a chord. The minor triad is the same thing but with the 3rd scale degree flattened.

As you can see it’s easy to find which notes belong to a chord if you already know the notes of the major scales. Memorizing all of the notes that belong to all of the scales and various chords is a great tool to have at your disposal but we are only going to concern ourselves with the interval relationships for the purpose of this course. The good thing about the guitar is the way we can move things around by shifting common patterns up and down without changing the shape of the pattern. Once you start learning the location of notes on the fretboard everything starts getting easier and all we need to do to find any triad is learn a few shapes and move them to any note we want.

Note: The distance between the 1st and 3rd is called a major third interval and the distance between the 1st and 5th is called a fifth (or a perfect fifth).

The diagrams above shows examples of how these intervals are arranged in the chords and simply repeated to make use of more than just three strings. What follows is a set of major and minor triad patterns using only three notes that you should make yourself familiar with.

Most of these patterns can be associated with, and found inside the common CAGED chord forms so take some time to look closely at them and find where they might fit into the chord shapes. For example you can see here how the E form chord contains three triad shapes.

Major Triads

Minor Triads

Learning these are vital to making your solos sound more musical. This is the key to creating solos that relate to the underlying chord changes. You know that a major chord is just the three notes 1, 3, 5 and a minor chord just flats the 3rd, once you get used to these patterns you will find it easy to think of chords as individual notes or patterns which you can use to create chord related licks and phrases that really inject life into your solos.

Master The Pentatonics Part Three

If you really don’t like the sound of the pentatonic scale then who am I to argue however if you want to sound like all the other rock and blues guitarists then it’s time to rethink your belief in the pentatonics because in these two genres the pentatonic dominates. This doesn’t mean outside notes or other scales never get used but if there is one scale you should master for these styles then the pentatonic it should be.

There is a huge difference between just knowing the pentatonic scales and actually mastering them. This takes time and effort but the the result will pay off in dividends. Knowing the minor pentatonic in all five positions is not really knowing the scale. What we are going to do in this lesson is break it down, rip it apart and put it all back together again. Knowing the five positions is certainly something you should have at your disposal but now’s the time to start thinking about using the scale differently.

This lesson doesn’t contain any practical examples but all the ideas can easily be put to practical use by making your own exercises and just generally jamming around with each idea. The real goal here is to practice each idea enough times until you can say that you always know where you are on the neck at any given moment. Once you reach this point you should find you are thinking less about the five scale patterns and more about just the scale and it’s notes.

If you are in a guitar rut then don’t underestimate just how much you can improve by playing around with the ideas that follow. I don’t want to fill the lesson with loads of text trying to convince you so if you haven’t done so already then I suggest reading through some of the topics in the articles forum. Some of them have a lot to do with these lessons but I try to keep them in a separate area where possible so that we can keep our focus more to the points of the lesson.

Although this lesson is concentrating mostly on the minor pentatonic it’s very important to understand the difference between the major and minor pentatonic scales in more detail than just moving the pattern up or down by three frets. Check out the lesson about major / minor scale differences for a gripping read! .

Okay, enough talk, let’s get to it…

The five common pentatonic shapes

The five common shapes for the minor pentatonic scale are shown below. There is no real standard for numbering the positions but it’s most common to refer to position 1 as the one that starts on the sixth string root note. This is shown here as the F minor pentatonic to make it easier to view all five patterns across the neck as a whole.

These five shapes are very useful and you should spend some time practising and getting to know them well. It’s important to think of these as five separate patterns, don’t allow yourself to make use of them by counting along the fretboard to reach each position. In a moment we will be looking at ways to associate these patterns with chord shapes but for now just use the root notes as your starting point for each shape, the following example shows the best way to do this.

Both the minor and major pentatonic scales rely on the same five positions so unless you learn them as individual entities then you might find that all your ideas will sound the same whether you are trying to create a major or a minor sound as mentioned earlier. To overcome all these problems we need to delve deeper into each shape so that they can be applied more creatively. The very least you should know is the location of the root notes for each shape, these will be different for minor and major within the same pattern and of course none of this will be helpful if you cant find the notes on the fretboard very quickly so if you don’t already know them, now is the time to start learning them.

Minor Pentatonic Root Notes

Major Pentatonic Root Notes

Note that some of the notes are shaded lighter, these notes shouldn’t be viewed as the starting note. In other words when learning these patterns, always start from the root note even if it isn’t on the sixth string otherwise you will have a hard time trying to find them quickly. The best method is to start from the root note, work backwards through the shaded notes and then back to the root before continuing on with the rest of the scale pattern. For example you could practice position two for A minor pentatonic like this..

Position 2 – A minor Pentatonic

The chords inside each pattern

Another useful method of familiarising yourself with each of the five pentatonic patterns is to associate them with chord shapes just like the CAGED system does with the major scale. If you have been playing guitar for a long while then you quite likely know the common open major, minor and bar chords. Even though it’s common for guitarists to know where to find the 5 and 6 string bar chord shapes across the neck it’s not so common for them to know the C, D and G shapes.

The diagram above shows the notes on the fifth and sixth strings up to the twelfth fret without the enharmonic tones (sharps and flats ). These are the common notes used to find the five and six string bar chords. I’m sure many of you know this already but I’ll give a brief explanation just in case.

The moveable five string bar chords are based on the open A form chord shape. The root note on the fifth string is the reference point (indicated by the arrow), you can move the whole shape along the neck and whatever note that lands on is the new chord. For example the images below show how the five string A form chord can be major or minor and moved along to form C major and E minor chords.

The six string moveable bar chord is based on the open E form and the example below shows how they can be moved to form G major and C minor.

What makes these two moveable shapes so common is simply because it’s easy to use the index finger to create a bar, and act just like a capo would by moving the nut further up the neck. The C, D and G forms aren’t so common because they involve more complex fingering patterns but with practice these fingering patterns can be mastered. However even if you think they are too difficult or feel that you don’t have any need to practice them it’s still quite important that you learn them, even if you can’t play them, the more you can visualise chord tones across the neck the better your playing will become.

C, D and G major open chord forms

C major form moved to create a D major chord

D major form moved to create an A major chord

G major form moved to create a C major chord

The D minor form is also a common chord shape that can easily be moved, here you can see how it is moved to make a G minor chord

Make sure you learn to recognise the C and G forms as moveable chords but don’t despair if you can’t get your fingers to play them, just make sure you know them anyway. I won’t show them moved along as this should be obvious by now.

All of these chord forms have the root note in more than one place and you should avoid learning to recognise them from the bottom two or three strings only. Here they all are again but this time associating them with the other root notes that they contain. All of these things take time to learn but don’t overlook them, the effort will pay off in dividends even if at this moment in time you can’t possible imagine how this can improve your ideas. Once you know them you will find yourself thinking differently about the way you play whether you are using pentatonics or not.

The Other Root Notes

Knowing all of these root note positions can help quickly locate chord shapes and similarly help you find the notes on the fretboard if you already know the chord positions.

If you already know that the 10th fret on the second string is an A then it’s easy to find the D form chord for A major

Using the five string (A form) bar chord notes as a guide on the third string and vice versa

Chord Overlaps

Another thing you should make yourself familiar with is how the chords overlap. The CAGED chord shapes each share at least one note on at least one fret. For example take a look at how the C form chord and D form chords overlap in the A major positions.

The diagram below shows the overlap parts for all of the CAGED forms in A major and minor.

——–Major Forms——–

——–Minor Forms——–

So what’s all this got to do with the pentatonic scales?

In case you might be wondering how any of this stuff can be useful and what has it got to do with pentatonic’s, well it’s all about being able to visualise the fretboard as an entire unit for any given chord, note or scale. Flying up and down the neck with ease is all about knowing where you are at any moment and not counting frets or using mnemonics. It can be hard to convince people that knowing all of this is necessary but the fact is it isn’t as hard to learn as it all might seem, once you start doing it, it can all come together quite quickly as you start to see common patterns emerging… but there’s still more to come!

Master The Pentatonics Part Two

There’s more to tuning a guitar than just plugging in a tuner and checking all six open strings.

I’m not going to waste time talking about obvious stuff like how to use a guitar tuner or how to turn the machine heads (tuning pegs) to adjust the string tension. What I am going to talk about here are some common guitar tuning methods but most importantly, tuning problems you are likely to encounter and how to get around them.

Tuning the guitar the old fashioned way

Before the electronic tuners came along there were three main methods used to tune a guitar.

1. Use a piano for reference on all six notes
2. Use a pitch pipe for reference on all six notes
3. Use a tuning fork for reference on just one note

The first two are straightforward enough. Play the E, A, D, G, B and E notes on the piano or the pitch pipes and tune the guitar strings to match.

Method number three, using a tuning fork is a little harder. The most common tuning fork is set at 440hz which is the same pitch as the ‘A’ note on the guitar’s thin E string at the fifth fret. This gives you only one note to work with so you need to tune the rest of the strings in relation to each other.

Most of you will already know this but for those that don’t, here is the most common method for tuning a guitar from only one reference note. First, you can use the tuning fork to tune the ‘A’ on the thick string at the fifth fret. You then tune each string in turn by matching the pitch from the string below it. For example.. once you have the sixth string in tune you can then play it at the fifth fret while playing the fifth string open. In other words, tune the open fifth string to match the pitch of the sixth string, fifth fret. Once that is done you then move to the next string pair… Play the ‘D’ at the fifth fret fifth string and tune the open fourth string to match the pitch. Use the diagram below to do this for each string until all six strings are in tune.

This method is okay but it does present a problem. Unless you can manage to tune each string perfectly then it’s likely that by the time you reach the thin E string, it probably won’t be in perfect tune and there will be a noticeable pitch difference between the ‘thin E’ first string and the ‘thick E’ sixth string, apart from the obvious difference in octaves.

There are two reasons this happens. The first is, your hearing might not be accurate enough and the very small inaccuracy that may occur between the tuning of the fifth and sixth strings become a larger, more noticeable error by the time you get to the second and first strings. Secondly, the intonation on a guitar (more on this in a moment) is never perfect and the worse this is, the harder it is to tune the guitar, with or without an electronic tuner.

Although with a little experience and a decent guitar it’s possible to get a perfectly acceptable tuning accuracy using this method, it’s a better option to even out and average the tuning across the fretboard by combining a few tuning methods together. First, lets take a look at another common method, tuning with harmonics.

Tuning the guitar with harmonics

There are two advantages to using harmonics to tune the guitar and one disadvantage that I can think of.

Advantages

1. Easier to hear the BFO with harmonics as opposed to fretted notes
2. Using harmonics leaves your hands free to take care of tuning while both notes are still ringing

Disadvantages

1. Takes no account of guitar intonation.

First lets get a little bit technical for just a moment. What is BFO?
BFO is an abbreviation for Beat Frequency Oscillation. In short, what this means is this. If you have two tones of different pitches playing simultaneously, then a third ‘virtual’ pitch is created which is the result of the difference in frequency of the two other pitches. I use the word ‘virtual’ because I can’t think of a better way to describe it but the third pitch is however, very much a real entity, it certainly exists, it’s just that you didn’t create it yourself.

I get a feeling this might not make much sense if you aren’t technical minded so lets look at an example.

The diagram below shows the three frets where you get the strongest harmonics. Octaves aside, the seventh and twelfth fret harmonics will produce the same notes as you would get if you played the same notes fretted. The fifth fret harmonics will produce the same note as the open string.

Harmonic notes at fifth, seventh and twelfth frets.

Take a listen to the audio sample to hear the BFO in action.

I use heavy gain and distortion on the first part in this sample as it gives more sustain and also makes the BFO stand out even more. It is then followed by the same thing with a cleaner tone.

Hear Tuning Sample 1

What you hear first is the harmonic plucked at the fifth fret, fifth string followed by the seventh fret, fourth string. At first they are in tune and then as I slightly detune the fourth string, you can hear the BFO kick in to produce a pulsing sound. The more I detune the fourth string the faster it gets. What you are hearing is the difference between the two frequencies. If the two strings are tuned two hertz apart then the resulting BFO would be pulsing two times per second and so on.

The idea of tuning the guitar with harmonics is to tune the strings until this pulsing disappears. The following audio sample demonstrates this, tune the string until the ‘beat’ disappears and the strings will be in tune. Again, the sample starts with distortion and then a clean version.

Hear Tuning Sample 2

Harmonic notes used in samples

There are many ways to use harmonics, fretted notes or a mixture of the two to tune a guitar. There’s no real point in showing a thousand combinations but here’s one method you could use.

The bottom line is there are many notes repeated across the fretboard and you can use any of them to aid with guitar tuning. For instance, between the open strings and the twelfth fret there are seven A’s. You can use any one of them as a reference to tune an ‘A’ on another string, providing of course the first one is already tuned to correct pitch. Even though they won’t all be in the same octave, a little amount of experience is all it takes to get used to hearing and detecting tuning differences between the same note in different octaves. You can of course go past the twelfth fret and find even more of the same note.

Realising this becomes useful for when you are averaging out the tuning across the neck. To understand why you would want to do this requires an understanding of a problem that arises with tuning fretted instruments with more than one string.

The guitar tuning problem

Fretted instruments, such as the guitar, suffer a minor drawback when it comes to trying to get them evenly tuned. Even the most expensive guitar cannot be tuned perfectly along the whole neck because it’s design makes it impossible. While a good guitar can keep tuning inconsistencies to a minimum and hardly noticeable, cheap and badly maintained guitars sometimes have very noticeable tuning problems.

Without getting technical, the reason the guitar cannot be perfectly tuned is because fret spacing is calculated using a set formula which is based on scale length and one theoretically perfect string. Unfortunately, scale length is the only constant used in the formula, but in the real world there are many variables that can affect the ideal fret spacing. String gauge, material type, temperature, tension and height among other factors all need to be taken into account to get the ideal fret placement on the neck. Unfortunately this means the fret spacing would need to be different for every string and this isn’t very practical (even though it has been done) so an acceptable average is what we end up with.

Intonation

Intonation has a few meanings but when talking about guitar tuning, we are referring to the pitch accuracy with respect to the fret placement. As described above, we encounter a few technical problems with the design of fretted instruments. The thick E string will behave slightly different from the thin E string because of their physical size differences, especially when being stretched by the fretting hand pressing down on them. Because the frets are in a fixed position, it’s possible to get a better “average tuning” across the neck by giving each string a slightly different scale length. Ever wondered why the saddle is set at a slight angle on an acoustic guitar?. Well now you know!.

On most electric guitars the intonation is adjustable via small screws at the bridge. Many amateurs are either unaware of this or sometimes just unsure how to set them up. If these aren’t set correctly then you get all sorts of tuning problems so it’s important to check these are set properly. It’s very simple to do. The best method is with the aid of an electronic tuner but can also be done by ear.

To set the intonation of each string you just need to compare the pitch of the 12th fret harmonic and then the twelfth fret, fretted as normal. If these are different then you adjust the screw (which alters the scale length) until they match. This isn’t hard to do but can be a bit time consuming at first because as you turn the screw, you alter the string tension which changes the pitch, which changes the result. If that doesn’t make sense then don’t worry about it, as soon as you try it out, you’ll see what I mean.

Note also that old strings can cause intonation problems. It’s sometimes very difficult trying to tune a guitar well with old strings even when the intonation is setup ok.

Tuning the strings evenly across the neck

Now down to the nitty gritty. You have a half reasonable guitar, good strings and the intonation is setup correctly. With all these things in place, the guitar probably still needs to be tuned evenly across the neck. If you are lucky and have a real good guitar then this might not be something you need to pay much attention to but just be aware that every guitar will have tuning inconsistencies as you move along the fretboard.

Every time you tune a guitar, with or without an electronic tuner, you should check not just the open strings but also a few other places along the neck as well. If they are noticeably different, then you have to compromise and tune them to an average, or place more importance on the area of the neck you will be playing most.

When I tune a guitar, I usually check the pitch at the open position, fifth fret, twelfth fret and maybe the seventeenth fret for an electric guitar and go for an average on each string if necessary. There is no rule, it’s purely down to what you hear and what you are playing. If you don’t hear anything that bothers you then it doesn’t matter. If you spend most of your time playing past the twelfth fret then let that part of the neck be the priority area for tuning, if you spend most time playing open chords then tune the open strings as priority, or whatever you feel is right for the moment.

The following series of diagrams gives some idea of how you might go about checking the average tuning. There are countless amounts of cross referencing you can do, these are just some of my own preferred tuning checks in no particular order.

Red notes are harmonics and yellow notes are fretted or open strings.

Various Tuning Possibilities..

How much can you really do with a pentatonic scale and it’s five positions? Other than moving up or down an octave, you still only get five notes to play with. Thirteen frets of a guitar covers a maximum of three octaves. The common minor pentatonic “box” pattern covers just over two octaves.

Take a look at the following diagram, it shows the five positions for the A minor pentatonic scale up to the thirteenth fret. The open strings are used for this example, therefore the five positions effectively require a coverage of fourteen frets.

Now take a look at the diagram below. The green notes are the standard minor pentatonic shape. The only notes right up to the thirteenth fret that aren’t available in the standard position are those notes in red. So what do you gain by using five pentatonic positions rather than just sticking around the easy box pattern? Four extra notes, that’s it! Seems almost pointless in that light doesn’t it. Four notes is all you gain by using five positions instead of one!

Obviously there are some benefits to knowing the five positions but for most beginner and amateur guitarists the benefits rarely add up to much more than the re-location of limited ideas, merely playing with the same group of notes somewhere else. Making real use of the whole fretboard boils down to experience and to be honest, the more experience you gain, the less you find yourself thinking about pentatonic positions. Eventually you should view the pentatonic scale across the neck as a whole series of ideas and possibilities that, it just so happens, can be pieced together to create five positions that you don’t really care much about. Either way, you should still learn them, as contradictorary as it may sound. Experience can take over after you have put them to some use, something with a bit more point than just moving a set of notes elsewhere. One such use would be creating a smooth flowing note movement over chords and key changes.

Smoothing the Changes

The ability to create smooth sounding solos that flow naturally between chord and key changes is something that takes quite a lot of experience and is one area that can make a solo stand out between sounding like you really know what you are doing or not. This applies to chord changes that remain in the key as well as those that move out of key. Choosing notes within your solo that make the transition between chord changes using chord tones with minimal movement will always sound natural.

This is best learned by getting on and trying it out for yourself, I’ll guide you through some ideas to play around with. The backing track we are going to use is the funky thirds jam track. It’s a basic minor chord jam that moves up in thirds. The chords are as follows..

• Am7 / Cm7 / Ebm7 / F#m7

None of these chords belong together in the same key therefore the key centre changes with each chord. To jam over this track we can use the minor pentatonic scale with respect to each chord. Start with the A minor pentatonic, then the C minor pentatonic etc.. After the last chord we end up back at the beginning and start over.

First things first, let’s spend some time playing along to the backing track.

Exercise 1. Playing over the chord changes

Jam along to this backing track using the standard pentatonic pattern over each chord.

Use this pattern at..

• Fifth fret for A minor pentatonic
• Eighth fret for C minor pentatonic
• Eleventh fret for Eb minor pentatonic
• Fourteenth fret for F# minor pentatonic

Play around with those positions however you like while getting used to the chord changes.

Exercise 2. The smooth change

Making a lead line sound as smooth as possible over chord changes relies on two things.

• Keeping interval movements short.
• Landing on chord tones over the chord changes.

In other words we are trying to make the transfer as subtle as possible while changing from one chord to the next. If you’re not exactly sure what that means then this should give you the idea. Try playing the top three strings of a C chord and then an A minor chord in the normal open positions, then compare it to the A minor at the fifth fret. The transition between the first example is a lot smoother because only one note is moving up two semitones from G to A. In the second example the same thing is happening but the A ends up a octave higher, a jump of fourteen semitones.

Example 1

E||------------0--------------0----|------------0--------------0----||
B||-------1--------------1---------|-------1--------------1---------||
G||--0--------------0--------------|--2--------------2--------------||
D||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||
A||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||
E||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||

Example 2

E||------------0--------------0----|------------5--------------5----||
B||-------1--------------1---------|-------5--------------5---------||
G||--0--------------0--------------|--5--------------5--------------||
D||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||
A||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||
E||--------------------------------|--------------------------------||

Both examples clearly reflect the chord changes because each phrase consists of chord tones. Both ideas work well but there’s no doubt that the first one sounds smoother.

How can we relate this to playing with scales?

Playing a solo using nothing but chord tones can sound a bit too much like elevator music but the good thing is we don’t need to use all the chord tones to create a natural flowing solo that reflects the chord changes. Our guitar solos for the most part don’t really need to highlight the chord tones for the duration of the chord. What really nails home the chord change is the note you play or emphasize at the moment the chord changes.

Exercise 3 – Emphasizing the changes

Here are some things that make your solos really work well with the chord changes.

1. Short intervals as described previously for a smooth flow.

2. Landing on chord tones over the changes. This can be considered an end of phrase note, ending a phrase on a chord tone at the moment the chord changes is the what really emphasises the change.

3. Don’t fly straight past the emphasis. If you are playing a long series of scale note runs with no pauses then emphasising chord changes becomes pointless. Although a chord change can still be emulated in your solo by using arpeggio runs, that’s not what this lesson is about.

4. Don’t move too fast away from previous chord or phrase you were just playing. There would be times where this wouldn’t work but most rock / blues solos it works well. Just as we have looked at leading into a chord change smoothly, we can also leave the previous chord gracefully. You’ll see this in action in the next example.

There are also a few other things that can add a bit of punch to the changes. Bending into the landing note can create a nice effect to the change but also choosing the best sounding landing note. The root or the fifth are often weaker than the third or seventh for instance. This can lead to a compromise between best note and smallest interval, you just have to experiment and see what sounds best. Obviously if you are improvising on the fly then you wont think this fast unless you have a vast amount of experience and a great ear. If however you have had a bit of time to work with a piece of music beforehand then you would probably have already found the sweet notes for the changes.

The thing is not to think about any of this as a set of rules, just use the ideas in your practice schedule and do it all ten million times Eventually your trained ear and your experience will make great sounding changes without worrying about how or what you done to make it happen, you’d have done it so much that it will just happen on autopilot.

Okay, let’s see this idea in action with what I call the caterpillar exercise. We are going to use the same pentatonic box positions as we did in the first exercise but only using the D and G strings. For this we are going to move up the neck “toggling” between position 1 minor pentatonic for the currently played chord and position 5 for leading into each chord that follows. I’ll spell it out with pictures just so that we’re clear.

To be honest I’ve never studied a caterpillar’s movements in any detail but the image of it I have in my head is how I visualise this exercise of moving along the neck, instead of jumping between scale positions we edge our way along without leaving the previous chord scale too abruptly. This gives us two smoothing effects, as well as entering the chord change gracefully we also leave the previous chord gracefully. All should become clear in a moment, lets look at the scale positions. If you don’t know the difference between your one and five positions then go check them out in the pentatonic lesson first.

A minor pentatonic position 5 and 1 overlapping.

Move the whole thing up three frets for C minor pentatonic position 5 and 1 overlapping.

Obviously we can move the same thing along another three frets for Eb minor and then another three for F sharp minor.

Now take a look at the intervals for the minor pentatonic scale positions 5 and 1. For this exercise we are interested in the minor third on the G string that overlaps the two positions, this will be our target tone for the chord changes.

Remember this is an exercise, not a rule. I feel the urge to repeat it because now I’m going to lay out a rule … but it’s only specific to this exercise. The idea is to do it enough to get your ear used to making smooth changes. Once you feel comfortable then you can go wild!.

The entire chord progression moves in thirds. We’ll use one set of rules now to move from one chord to the next. The same thing is then repeated along the neck so I’ll just show the transition between A minor and C minor. Here is the procedure.

First, Study the way A minor pentatonic position 1 overlaps with C minor pentatonic position 5 and 1. Then concentrate on only using the D and G string parts of each pentatonic pattern.

A minor pentatonic position 1 with C minor pentatonic superimposed over the top

Play along using A minor pentatonic position 1 over the Am7 chord using strings D and G only.

Look for the target tone of the next chord. In this case it’s the flat third of C minor and it’s shown below in position 5. Note that only two notes have changed from the A minor position. Also, try using short intervals to lead into the target tone, moving from the D to the Eb creates only a semitone interval transition between the scale changes.

By using position five of the C minor pentatonic, it allows us to make a smooth transition from the A minor and gently lead our way in. Let that sound settle for a few beats and then move along to position 1 of C minor pentatonic.

We’re back where we started, only now it’s with the next chord. Repeat this same idea along the neck until you reach the F# minor.

Bringing it all closer together.

Now we get to to the nitty gritty. We’ve pretty much covered the technical details of making smooth changes. The only thing we want to do now is practice all of the above but keep the scales closer together on the fretboard. This is where you start to gain control of the fretboard and your solos. You could skip all of the above and jump straight in to using more positions but I wouldn’t recommend it and here’s why. If you find most of your solos are limited to the standard pentatonic box then it’s a large step forward getting used to playing around with other positions, let alone having to think about key changes as well. (Even though I don’t personally like the term “position’s,” it’s quite apt for this lesson.)

Spend some time doing what you do best and if that happens to be the standard pentatonic pattern then the above exercise is really going to get you prepared both in terms of the way you think and the way you listen. Once you feel comfortable with that, using the other positions becomes much much easier because you’ll have so much less to think about. You’ll know what to do, all that’s left is to find where to do it.

There’s a lot of options available to play over this jam track in one area. Look for as many as you can come up with and practice them all. The diagrams below give you some ideas to get started and the video should clear up any confusion, which hopefully there’s not too much of cos I’ve done such a great job of explaining it all, right?

Have fun!

Learning the notes on the fretboard is among one of the most useful things you can do to get you out of the guitar rut. Having the ability to look at the fretboard and see every note just like you would read words in a book is one of those things that you will never realise how important it is until you can do it. This skill takes some time to master but it’s very important that you do if you want to get away from playing your solo’s purely by scale patterns. You will find plenty of products on eBay and throughout the Internet that claim miracle methods to learn this in one hour etc. but let me give you some advice on these miracle methods…

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THESE RIDICULOUS PRODUCTS. THERE IS NO SECRET, THERE IS NO QUICK AND USEFUL METHOD!!

In fact I will go as far as to say they might do you more harm than good. They rely on tricks and the use of mnemonics to help you memorise the notes and find them quickly within relation to one and other through the use of short stories that need to be memorised. These methods serve absolutely no use in real world guitar playing and if you get too used to using them then you are more likely to avoid ever learning them properly.

These ideas do nothing to help you look at a note and just see it purely for what it is. For instance the tenth fret on the B string is an A. When you look at that note you just need to know it’s an A, not.. “it is an A because it is two frets back from the B” or it is an A because the same fret on the string underneath it is a D which you worked out from part of your memorised story… “Doctor Gary Cooper Found Alan Drinking”. This is how some of these crazy ideas work, (think 10th fret starting on the sixth string, D,G,C,F,A,D) they use well known memory tricks to help you find notes and while these tricks are very clever and might have good use elsewhere, they are of absolutely no use in real world guitar playing.

I couldn’t tell you what the best method might be for learning them, I think this will vary from person to person, some people use flash cards, some write it down and make up exercises and I’m sure you could come up with many ways to learn them yourself.

I will explain how I did it and would urge you to try the same method to see if it works for you or maybe adapt my idea to your own liking. Learning to play guitar through sight reading is probably the best method but we’ll leave that for a discussion some other time because I doubt it will be very popular, besides that, I’m no sight reader myself

Anyway, the first thing I done was to concentrate on just one note and master it across the neck. I started with the note “A” and simply stuck with it everyday for about a week by jamming over an A blues backing track using only the first octave or so from the A minor pentatonic. Not only did this method work well for me but it also made it interesting as well as boosting my enthusiasm to learn the entire fretboard.

The benefits of mastering just one note.

It can be difficult convincing someone just how beneficial it is to be able to instantly visualise the notes on the fretboard. Here are some pros to using my method.

• It’s never boring because you are jamming while you learn.
• You only need to master one twelfth of the fretboard to start seeing some real benefit to knowing the rest of the notes.
• Because you don’t need to learn the fretboard in it’s entirety to see some real benefits, it should encourage you to want to learn the rest of them.
• One note is equal to one twelfth of all the notes on the fretboard but results in something much much more than one twelfth of the improvements you are about to make in your playing. This is only the start of being able to effectively use chord tones in your playing.. one of the biggest differences between pros and amateurs!

Here are all the A notes up to the 14th fret (excluding the open A).

The method is simple. Take the first few notes of your favourite scale (mini pentatonic pattern) and jam with it over a backing track. The Jam Loops are perfect for this if you need to go slow or look for a suitable jam track here on this site.

Move small pentatonic patterns around the neck to start on every A note randomly and just jam along. Every time you move to another “A” make sure you locate and visualise it first before you actually move the pattern to it. This is very important, it’s that mental thinking part that makes you achieve results faster.

The following patterns give you the idea how this is done with the A minor pentatonic, first start with a four note pattern and then move on to slightly larger patterns. As you get comfortable with them try to take note of how these smaller patterns are really just chunks of the five pentatonic positions, at this point you should find you are thinking about the fretboard very differently as a whole new world opens up to you.

Have fun!

Patterns using the first four notes of the A minor pentatonic

We can’t use the same four note pattern starting on the first string so this one is descending.

Six note minor pentatonic patterns…

Patterns ascending to the left…

Don’t restrict yourself to just the patterns shown here, these will just get you started. Once you feel comfortable with the idea then move on to other eleven notes. Even though these ideas help greatly to improve the way you think about the pentatonic scales don’t forget the main purpose here is to learn the note locations on the fretboard.

I listen to a lot of lead guitar jams from amateur guitarists stuck in the rut. I’m not going to waste time here carefully choosing my words, I’ll let you decide yourself whether this applies to you or not but I will say this, unless you are truly happy with your playing then it’s very likely that some, if not all of this will apply to you.

Most amateur guitarist’s solos suck, not because they can’t play properly but because they WON’T play properly. Most of you visiting this site probably come here because you are into rock or blues guitar so lets get one very important thing out of the way first, something I repeat many times. The pentatonic scale dominates these genres. Don’t get me wrong, learning other scales, chords, arpeggios, theory etc is all good stuff, it’s all important, it’s all good to know, but what you should not be doing is spending all your time looking for the wrong ways to improve your guitar solos and ignoring the fact that there’s a very high probability you are ignoring at least some of the five most important basics of playing any musical instrument.

Now don’t hit the back button when I say what these five things are. I know you hear them all the time and it sounds like the same old boring stuff but believe me these are the biggest things that separate amateurs from pro’s … Timing, articulation, expression, phrasing and ear. That’s it. Not scale notes or runs, not licks and thorough chord knowledge. Most of you will be spending more of your time looking for formulas that you can use to play over chords and scale runs and cool licks, ways to play up and down the whole neck and what not. If you’re not paying attention to those five things outlined above then you are wasting your time with everything else.

Take a listen to this short solo.

I planned and threw that together in the same amount of time as it took me to play it. It’s not great, it could be better, that’s not important. What is important is it’s a fairly passable solo, if I pulled that off live on stage then I wouldn’t turn many heads but I also wouldn’t have been asking Scotty to beam me up

So what’s my point? … The point is this. That short solo contains only six notes as shown in the diagram below from the minor pentatonic scale and nothing else! What’s more, ninety percent of it was only using just four notes around the D and G string.

There’s a lot of bold text going on in those last few lines because I really can’t stress this enough. Many of you will be spending more of your time practicing and seeking out things that have less importance, or at least aren’t at the top of your priority list just yet. How much time do you spend really listening to what’s actually coming out when you play guitar? If you can’t produce something you are at least fairly happy with using only a few notes then you should start making this your priority right now.

By regularly restricting yourself to just a few notes when you practice, it will virtually force you to not only pay attention to your technique but guarantee you will improve much faster. When you spend all your time trying to play up and down the whole neck using every scale you can find, you are guaranteeing yourself a slower progress overall. Restricting yourself to small areas should show improvements within your playing within days.

I chose this simple straight feel twelve bar jam track in A for my example. It’s not particularly exciting but it’s straightforward and we will be using it for the upcoming lessons which will go through the five techniques in turn. In the meantime, start practicing with that jam track.