Learn the Neck

Discussion Seven:
Straight Talk about
Pentatonic Scales

Guitar for Geeks

by Ed Shaw

A Creative Commons 2014

Music Education Proj ect

Introduction to Discussion Seven

With the advance of online education, internet music and guitar
instructions have blossomed. It is safe to say that the internet now
ranks among the top guitar education methods, including music schools
and private lessons being used by guitarists and guitar students.
This Creative Commons proj ect was inspired by the many You Tube
teachers who use the medium to promote paid instruction services or j ust
for the enj oyment of sharing knowledge and giving back to the guitar
player community. This series makes use of both free hosted video and
free e-book hosting, You Tube and Scribd. It may be useful for adults
who must learn in their own spare time, or people who have neither money
or time for regularly scheduled lessons.
The subtitle of this discussion, " Straight talk about Pentatonic
Scales" is tongue-in-cheek with an element of seriousness. Note that the
title is not, " Straight Talk to Teens about Pentatonic Scales, " though
I was tempted, j ust as a j oke.
The element of seriousness is caused by the hard fact that all
musicians are divided into two parts: those who read music and those who
don' t. This series makes no bones about the requirement of sight
reading. It uses and encurages a method of learning to sight read that
is really no more complex than sitting down with a single note lead
sheet such as those produced by Hal Leonard Company in the " Fake Books
in C Maj or" series, available on Amazon, or from any other number of
sources supplying simplifed melody sheets like the ones we first ran
into in our Mel Bay or Hal Leonard instruction books. As the musician
progresses, he may introduce pre-recorded backing tracks, karaoke, into
his practice and eventually be writing his own scores with Crescendo or
Sebelius.
We could talk about learning music theory and sight reading ' till
the cows come home and it probably would not make any difference. I like
the approach of people starting out with music using all the shortcuts,
having fun. As the interest and skill develops, so will the curiosity.
That includes learning music theory, learning the notes, learning the
neck, learning to read, untimately, mastering the instrument.
This discussion is about the very popular, widely used and widely
taught, but not so widely discussed, pentatonic scales.
Without further adieu, here we go with " Straight Talk about
Pentatonic Scales. "
Yours in six strings,
Ed Shaw

The A minor Pentatonic Scales of the Guitar Fret

If I could j ust get you to look at this fret board diagram, this
discussion could be called a success.
The fret board diagram shows the A minor pentatonic scales.
There
are several ways to explain the scale, that is, how the scales are
formed and how they come about. There are several ways to learn the
scales, too. The most popular way to learn the scales on You Tube is to
learn the shapes. Even in this discussion, which takes a traditional
" learn the notes, learn to read" approach, we analyze the variety of
positions and pay attention to the patterns, or shapes of the scales. For
many people, this seems to be the best way to learn.
Ironically, the simplest way to explain the scale assumes the
student has done the tedious ground work of learning the neck and
learning to read. It is ironic that the most demanding way to learn winds
up making mastery much easier, in the long run. The simple explanation is
that the A minor pentatonic scale is A - C - D - E - G - A. Five notes,
six from the root to the octave A note. Musicians who know the fret board
understand exactly where this scale is, anywhere on the fret board.
People who do not know the neck find themselves looking around the neck,
memorizing the root positions, the A notes.
A pentatonic scale is actually a five note abbreviation of a maj or
or minor scale. You Tube teachers and others teaching rock and blues
usually start with the A minor pentatonic scale because it is the
relative minor of the C maj or scale. The A minor pentatonic plays well
in the key of C maj or, and has no flats or sharps. In fact, it is an A
maj or scale that has been converted by a formula into an abbreviated C
maj or scale.
The sixth degree of any maj or scale is the key of the relative
minor. The sixth degree of the C maj or scale is A. Once you have that
A maj or scale, as j ust shown, delete the second and sixth degrees, or the
B and the F#. Then flat the third and seventh degrees, or the C# and the
G#. The result is the A minor pentatonic, relative to the C maj or scale,
consisting of the note A - C - D - E - G - A.
That is the formula and
the same formula applies to all the maj or scales.

An A maj or scale follows the step pattern of Root, whole step,

whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step to the
Octave. That is A - B - C# - D - E - F# - G# - A .
The A natural minor scale follows the step pattern of Root,
whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step,
whole step to Octave. That is A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A .
Graphically, it looks like this:

Both the A minor scale and the A minor pentatonic scales differ
from the maj or scale in that three degrees have been flattened. I don' t
want to get too technical about this, but notice also the deletion of
the 2nd degree from the minor scale further flattens the sound by
getting rid of the sharp roots of most of the maj or scales, especially
the ones commonly used in folk and blues. On my path, which is
traditional Christian hymns, I am always surprised to see how often I
run across melodies that come straight from the pentatonic scales. I
wonder sometimes if classical musicians find the same things. For our
purposes, it is enough to remember that the blues scales create a flat
" feel" in the music, a mournful of sorrowful feeling to the music.
Maj or scales rouse the congregation. Minor scales encourage prayer,
communion, and meditation. Repentance is a form of sorrow, really.

The Intervals

You might be saying, this is all well and good as academic

background, but what has it to do with my playing? You' d be wrong, but
you would say it anyway, because that is what all students say. Not that
it is not a good question, but really, it boils down to j ust another
excuse to not sit down in front of a music stand with the sheets in front
of you. That is kind of like people who say, " If I learn to read music, I
will no longer be able to play with feeling. " Tell that to Yasha Heifitz
or Arturo Rubenstein.
The simple, evident truths are the important things.
(1) The A minor pentatonic may be played in position three, frets
five through eight, with the index finger on fret five.
(2) The A minor pentatonic may be played in position three, frets
two through five, with the pinky on the fifth fret A note.

Your question is, " Are there any significant differences in

tonality between the two scale positions, the low road and the
high road?" I know, but I would rather the student figure that
out for himself. After all, this is " Guitar for Geeks. " Self
respecting geeks figure stuff out for themselves; not that we
are above taking a little help, from our friends.

This all may seem like stating the obvious, but there is a real
reason we need to be on the same page, starting out, as we engage in
this discussion of intervals. You see, the A note as the root of the
scale, when located on the first string E, is the starting point of
two scale options. The first has the 2nd degree C note on the same
string as the root A. Option number two is to play the second degree
C note on the second string, third fret. Two clear choices, two
entirely different interval patterns. Oh, the interval between the
notes, the A note and the C note, remains the same, that is, one and
one half steps, but the visual picture is entirely different.
Here is a challenge for you. Look at the C note on the third
fret, string two. It is one and a half steps higher than the open A
string. Do you see that the interval between the first string fifth
fret A note and the second string third fret C note is one and one
half steps? The shape, down a string, down two frets, is the (1-3)
interval of the minor pentatonic scale. Once this is straight in
the students' minds, they have learned two very important
intervals. Look around the diagam and spot those two intervals in
six places. Just as important, notice the instances where the
pattern alters on account of that de-tuned B string, for instance,
the second fret A note has that interval.
For now, be satisfied in absorbng the information and
mastering the touch of that 1 - 3 interval, in this case the
interval between the A note and the C note, one and one half steps,
in two different forms. The first on the same string, the other on
the string right below it.
We can go through the same process to point out all the
intervals. We will discuss most of them before we are finished. The
intervals are very important, because once we know them, we have a
quick road map of notes and do not have to pause and think about
them while we are playing. These patterns are so important to
playing in different keys. Let' s say we know all the A minor
pentatonic intervals, we are playing along as the band plays in C
maj or, and the band shifts to a D maj or song. We simply move
everything up two frets and we are in tune. But that is getting
ahead of ourselves.

For now, we j ust continue to stare at that diagram.

Now, look carefully. Do you see the A - C - D - E - G - A note
pattern literally shooting off in all directions, like an open ended
maze of pathways?
The place everyone starts is with finger one, the index, on the
first string A, fifth fret, and the pinky on the 8th string C note. That
is the most famous scale pattern in rock, blues, and country. Just
everyone agrees, this is the place to start. Well, not exactly
everyone. There are still those of use who insist the best place to
start is with the C maj or scale, the eight note diatonic, do - re - mi fa - so - la - ti - do. But, I have harped on that enough on other
discussions to permit me to give it a rest in this one.
Guitar is a treble instrument. See that 5th fret A note on the
first bass E string? It is kind of a pink color. It is actually the
same tone as the open A string below it.
On the same E string, go up a fret and one half to the C note.
(That is middle C on the piano. ) The the three fret distance between
the notes is called an interval. Each fret is a half step, so the
interval of the first and second notes on the scale may be referred to
as one and a half steps.
Go down one string to that open A string and down two frets, find
the C note that is the middle C on a piano. That C note sounds the same
pitch, frequency, as the eighth fret C note we j ust talked about -middle C on the piano. If you were to look at a grand staff, that C
note would be between the bass and treble staffs, neither bass nor
treble.
I digress.
OK, so now we are two pages into the discussion and have covered one
string and two intervals. While that may not sound like great progress,
it actually is, because in music, knowledge builds and repeats. What we
learn about one scale applies the next, and the next. So, I want to
pause here to post a couple of diagrams to make things clear. First,
remember the two options for playing the A minor pentatonic from the
first string root, fifth fret? Here they are:

Below, top, start the scale with the pinky on the 5th fret.
Right, start the scale with the index finger, one, on the 5th fret.
Below, bottom, both options isolated into the scales that
combine to create the hand position.
After mastering these two sets, what remains is starting the
scale at the D string 7th fret and the A string 12th fret. You can
see how fast progress can go, once you get started.

All of the Interval Classes of the A minor Pentatonic

I' ve chosen to call these illustrations the " interval classes"
because every kind of A minor pentatonic is represented, but not every
example. Figures (1) and (2) are the intervals on the first and second
string. They are identical.
The third to the fourth string does not
change, either. However, at figure (3) the de-tuned fifth B string, the
intervals all shift up one fret.
Same thing goes for figure (4. ) The intervals to the de-tuned fifth
string are all one half step higher that we might have expected to find
them. At the same time, the intervals from the fourth string to the
sixth are also a half step higher than we found them on strings one,
two, and three.
To add to the initial confusion, since the sixth string E is tuned
to a fifth of the string above it, the B string, the fifth to sixth
string intervals are the same as the first, second, and third string
intervals above it.

(1) Intervals off the First String

(3) Intervals off Third String

(2) Intervals off Second String

(4) Intervals off Fourth String

(5) Intervals off Fifth String

So, that was a discussion of the intervals of the A minor pentatonic

scales. We did not get into the scales of the 4th, 5th, and 6th
positions, frets seven through fifteen, although well we might have,
since those are the frets at least half of your lead work is going to be
played on. You will find that the information we did cover applies very
easily to the neck above the eighth fret.
At this stage, be sure to pay attention to the skill of putting the
correct finger on the chosen root, quickly and without hesitation. We
started the discussion talking about the correct fingering of the fifth
fret A note, that is, the choice between index and pinky. That leaves
seven more to figure out.

The First (Open) Position of the A minor

By now, some have probably asked, " What about the first, the open,
position? There are scales there, too. So, not to sell the first
position short, here are the first position pentatonic scales.

Here are the A minor pentatonic scales at the open position. Once
the guitarist plays with these positions, he' ll soon get the idea that
the open position is not really the prime real estate for playing the A
minor pentatonic, or any other lead scale, for that matter. The first
position works best for strums. Also, those first position fifth and
sixth string notes
come in handy for melodic expression.
The fifth string A note sounds the same as the open A note. The
truth is, we hardly ever use it. Most lead work starts with the seventh
fret A note and higher.

The A minor Pentatonic Scale in Action

This is the part lazy geeks have been awaiting, the part where we
talk about how to put this scale knowledge into effect in your playing.
I hate to disappoint you again, but the answer to all of this lies in
the simplified melody lead sheets, where you might have gone all along
and saved yourselves the trouble of having put up with all my chat.
The song I have chosen to illustrate this discussion is an old
gospel favorite of unknown authorship and date, " Old Time
Religion. " The song certainly predates the 20th century, as it was
included in the famous " Gospel Pearls" 0f 1921, Nashville. The
song likely developed over times in camp meetings and services of
African-American Christians.
The " Gospel Pearls" rendition was in Ab. Here, I transposed
it to C maj or, since that is the key we are working with. When the
song is played in Ab, the relative minor pentatonic would be in the
key of F minor, I think.

The first line of the melody is right out of the A minor

pentatonic. The first line is a G - A pickup, tied 8th notes, then a C
- C - C first bar, followed by three bars of A - G - C - C , D - D - E
, and D - C . The second line repeats the pickup measure, C - D, then
plays four more bars to the end. E - E - E , D - C - A , G - C - B D , ending with a bar of C.
This is a good time to talk about a question that is raised so
much. " What scale do I use for what key?" That would be in line with a
question that might come up about soloing in the A minor scale over
song in the Cmaj or key. That is, " What' s that B - D note combination
doing in that shift from C to G7 in the seventh measure of the song?
For one thing, the B note and the D note are the 3 and 5 of the
G maj or scale, which is the accompanying, or comping, chord.
For
another thing, the B note is the 7th of the C scale, entirely fitting
for a song in C maj or.

" Old Time Religion" C maj or Lead

This could be a little confusing, because the eight bar sheet does
not exactly appear to sync with the four bar lead lines. Here, I am
going to plead a bit of laziness on my part. I hadn' t realized this or
thought of it when I was arranging the backup track for " Old Time
Religion" for myself. This backup track uses Roy Clark style triplets
in the rhythm line. Just cout out the beats eight to the bar and it
will work. Otherwise, I have to rearrange either the sheet music to fit
the backing track or vice versa. It' s not worth the trouble.
Just notice that every line of the lead sheet is the same. And
that we can cut the measures in half without sacrificing anything.

Backing Track
Here is the location for the " Old Time Religion" backing tracks that
accompany this discussion. There are two versions on this account:
http: //yourlisten. com/ed_shaw/old-time-religion-cmaj -country-triplets

The Practice Routine for All

Print this page or bring it up full sized on the portable
device of choice. Download the " Old Time Religion" backing track from
MyListen. com. Store it on a WAV or a MP3 player.
With the scale diagram in front of you, on a music stand,
lighted, pick a starting point. With your eyes on the diagram, play
the scales without regard to the hand position. Pretend you are a
mouse in a maze, and he is going to explore every avenue of escape.
The only stipulation is that he must avoid spots where there is no
note. In other words, using th fret board diagram, play randomly. Play
very slow at first. Pay close attention to the sounds the note
progressions and combinations make. Should you become bored, sing out
the notes and try to sing them out on pitch.
Same goes for the sheet music of " Old Time Religion, " only when
you play the song, play the notes as written.
Play them in the six different hand positions we discussed in
parts one through five of this series.
Until we meet again,
Ed Shaw

The Author
Ed Shaw is a Christian musician specializing in traditional
hymns. The e-book, " Learn the Neck" is part of the " Guitar
for Geeks" series, available as a free download at:
http: //www. scribus. com/EdwardSShaw
Backing Tracks and some performance tracks.
MyListen and Soundcloud
http: //yourlisten. com/ed_shaw/old-time-religion-cmaj -country-triplets
http: //www. soundcloud. com/ed_shaw
Associated videos are on You Tube
https: //www. youtube. com/channel/UCHpD34CBbCIgG7-oIRKi7IQ
and Vimeo.
www. vimeo. com/edshaw

Ed Shaw' s " YourListen. co" Screenshot

" Straight Talk about Pentatonic Scales" was composed on " Scribus 1. 4. 3" Open Source desktop publishing
software.
Graphics were produced in " MS Paint. "

Musical notation was done in NCH " Crescendo"

Backing tracks were produced in " Band in a Box" for Windows and edited in Sony Acid Studio.
Public Domain (PD) music supplied by www. pdinfo. com