Hey, how you doing? Justin here; in this lesson, we're gonna be looking at the
'A-minor Pentatonic' scale. I'm sure some of you have heard the term, 'minor
pentatonic scale', it's most commonly used for Blues improvising, which is what we're
gonna be getting into in the next lessons. I wanna give you a bit of a head-start at
playing the scale up and down, the idea of playing a scale and improvising within a
scale, should be already familiar to you, 'cause we've looked at the 'C-major' scale
already in this course. You've had a go at improvising, hopefully you enjoyed it.
Blues improvising is a little different, in that we end up using these things
called 'licks', which are short little phrases that we use but the licks are
usually coming from the minor pentatonic scale, at least as a starting point. It
feels a little different, and we're gonna be playing it further up the neck, so that
it's gonna present a few other difficulties, not difficulties, it just gonna feel a
little different to be playing further up the neck like that. It's not very difficult,
it's got two notes on every string. It's a little clue in the name here the 'pentatonic'
scale, 'penta' five, it's a five note scale; in the key of 'A', we've got 'A',
'C', 'D', 'E', 'G', and then it's back to 'A'. Of course, we've got, kind of, twelve
tones, that we're playing 'cause we've got two notes on each string and six strings,
but it's actually only five notes before the cycle repeats itself. We're gonna be
playing with the 1st finger starting in the fifth fret of the thickest string, now
that is the note 'A', and that is the root note, and just like power chords, the
minor pentatonic scale could be played up and down the neck, and it will be in a
different key; if we moved it down to the third fret, it would be 'G-minor pentatonic',
if we moved it all the way up to the tenth fret, it would be, 'D-minor pentatonic'
scale, but I would recommend to start off with, just practicing it in the key of 'A',
let's have a go! So let me just play it for you once up and down first of all, so
you can see the whole thing [playing A-minor pentatonic scale on guitar]. So,
we're starting here with the 1st finger on the fifth fret of thickest string, then
little finger goes down on the 8th fret of the same string; I'd recommend just
using all down picks while you're learning the shape, and then, we'll talk about
alternate picking in just a sec; then we've got 1st finger, fifth fret, 3rd
finger, seventh fret on the the fifth string. Exactly the same pattern on the
fourth string, so, 1st finger and 3rd finger on the fifth and seventh fret respectively.
Same pattern again on the third string; 1st finger, 3rd finger...fifth fret, and
seventh fret. Now on the second string, 1st finger, little finger, okay? Little
finger is going down the eighth fret, and the same pattern now on the thinnest
string. We don't play the top note twice generally, so we'd go straight back down
to the 1st finger, then we'll have eighth fret to fifth fret on the second string;
seventh fret, fifth fret on the third string; seventh fret, fifth fret on the
fourth string; same again on the fifth string; little finger on the eight fret to
first finger on the thickest string. So, first step - try and remember that it's
1st finger, little finger, and then it's just these two frets apart all of the way
up to the second string, where they're separated again. So, using little finger
down the thinnest two strings [playing A-minor pentatonic scale on guitar]. Now,
probably the best approach, when you first learning a scale, is using all down
picks, so you can concentrate on the geometric shape that the scale makes, the
Box! This is often called 'Box-1', of the minor pentatonic; I call it 'Pattern-1'.
Some people call it, 'Box-1', some people call it 'Position-1', doesn't matter, it's
the same thing. So, the first thing, you wanna look at is the shape, and it does make
kind of a box, you see the 1st finger is playing all those notes, and you got little
finger on the thinnest two strings, 3rd finger on the next three, and little
finger down there on the eighth. So, you can, kind of, see that it makes [playing
A-minor pentatonic scale on guitar] a box shape. Once you can play this scale, and
you've got it to memory, then you might wanna start thinking about doing alternate
picking; the easiest way to think of alternate picking here with this scale
shape is that you can use a down pick on the notes with the 1st finger, and an up
pick on all of the others. So, it had down pick, [picking notes of A-minor pentatonic
scale] up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up,
down, up, down, up, down, up, down; and you could just repeat that around. Key
things here with the scales, remember to do it slowly. Much better to be slow and
accurate than it is to be faster making mistakes, 'cause every time you make a
mistake, you have to do it like a hundred times to reprogram your brain, to do it
the right way; it's a really really important part of learning scales,
arpeggios, any of these, kind of, complicated geometric shapes, you wanna be
doing them slow enough to train your brain to be doing it exactly right. 'Don't risk
doing it the wrong way!' Really, really, really important! Okay? Probably, the most
important thing about learning scales, making sure you get that right. I would
recommend, that's partly why I say, just do it with the down picks first of all to
get that shape right; then you can start exploring it with the alternate picking.
You can play it with a metronome if you like, or you can just concentrate on
actually making sure that the tempo is as consistent as you can make it. Try not to
be stop start-y; try and get [humming]; try and keep that rhythm nice and even; as
even as you can, even if that means slow. Much better again, to be having a slow
even rhythm, than some playing some bits faster than others. There's one other
thing that I wanna mention to you, which, you know, it might be slightly controversial;
it's to do with the fingering of the scale. When I learned it, it was the fingering
that I just showed you, and that's a good starting point, but as soon as you actually
get into playing any Blues or Rock, there's a thing that you're gonna encounter called
the 'string bend', which is where you, kind of, push the string up with your fingers to
change the pitch; it's a very unique guitar thing, very common in Blues and Rock. It's
this, kind of, [string bending] so you can see, I'm pushing the string, and I can
make it sound a different [string bending]. It's a really really common thing, this
string bending, especially in Blues. So, one thing that you might wanna explore,
even at this early stage, is using the 3rd finger on the thinnest two strings as
well, which, it's gonna seem like, "woah, it doesn't seem like a very good idea; it
means, I'm stretching up my fingers funny", but actually, in reality, it's probably
what you're gonna end up doing more often than not what is, especially when you're
playing Blues, so you might wanna check out this fingering as well; so, going 1st
finger, little finger still on the thickest string. Then 1st finger, 3rd finger
[playing A-minor pentatonic scale], now when you get to the second string, 1st
finger, 3rd finger; now can you see my fingers have suddenly got on an angle? So
even if they're a bit squarer here, as soon as I turn like this, my hand's turned
at an angle [playing A-minor pentatonic scale] 'cause doing it straight like that,
that's awkward, even for me, I've got decent stretch, that's awkward. This is
comfy; and now, you can see that the fingers are slowly straightening up;
here they go, look, they're starting to angle; and that's because most of the string bending,
you wanna be starting with the fingers angled, you don't do it like this; that's
bad technique for bending. So, [string bending on guitar] you can see just, from
these little examples, how that the 3rd finger is spending a lot of time there
up on the eighth fret, and I, kind of, wish that my teachers had shown me that
way, which is a little bit more practical, little bit more useful. Little bit
controversial 'cause if you do wanna play a scale just straight up and down, and you
wanna play a scale faster, little finger is definitely a better option but, we
don't go and watch people who are great scale players. I never went to see 'John
Mayer' and go, "oh man, he plays that A-minor pentatonic so good!" That never
happened, right? It's just about the music that's made, and to make music, the
fingering doesn't always apply in a logical fashion that you might expect, so,
I would recommend, at least having a bit of an explore, of using the 3rd finger on
that. We're not gonna be covering string bending until after the Beginner's Course,
but something that you might find helpful to start practicing now in preparation for
that. So again, minor pentatonic will be in your practice routine; I'd recommend
that you just practice it up and down, and work on the alternate picking for now,
and we're gonna put it into practice in the very next lesson. If you happen to be
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If you got any questions about this lesson, the best place to asking these
over on the website in the comment section; I check-in and answer as many
questions as I can, as often as I can. Really hope you're enjoying the course
so far, I'll see you for plenty more very soon. Bye bye.