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Hi guys

I learnt a basic pentatonic scale on A chord and just wondered how easy it would be to create a mini solo from this? I have started going through the scale and move up and down the strings and add a little bending etc. Any ideas?

is this starting with your finger on the 5th fret of the 6th string?

If so this is the classic pentatonic position and you can probably play a million solos using it!

Yeah I agree - even playing a pentatonic scale "raw" can be a solo in itself. I think it works especially well in blues.

Yeah it starts on the 5th fret and 6th string, im getting used to playing it faster and faster but sometime it just 'clicks' and other times i really struggle. Learnt sweet home alabama today lol, easy but effective. Really enjoying playing, must be about 3 months down the line now since i started and think im getting to grips with it Just really cant wait to play SOAD BYOB all the way through with no mistakes, then i will know ive arrived and then i will want an IBANEZ haha

Hey fishfingers, good job! Pentatonics are awesome to use in your playing.
You can also use minor and major pentatonics together. B.B. King is one
of the best at that!

It's also good to learn different patterns of pentatonics (box positions, as well as extended).

I suggest practicing these scales over jam tracks as well.

Good luck, and feel free to reply

Minor Pentatonic scale was one of the first things my neighbour taught me, damned useful at helping you pick more accurately.

Just curious though, aside from pentatonic how many variations of scales are there?

there are many scales. First you have to focus on pentatonics, major, minor and the modes. After you choose to learn a scale, you have to stick to it for a while, so that you can play it many variations so that you expand your fretboard visualization, and you are able to experiment with different things.

I started with the modes, so now i try to experiment with the pentatonic a lot. The scale sounds pretty cool and i want to learn it inside out like i did with the modes.

Troy Stetina's Heavy Metal Lead Guitar Volume 1 hasseveral solos that are taught using nothing but the first position Pentatonic minor scale. Great techniques, licks and melodic ideas, there!

fishfingers wrote:Hi guys

I learnt a basic pentatonic scale on A chord and just wondered how easy it would be to create a mini solo from this? I have started going through the scale and move up and down the strings and add a little bending etc. Any ideas?

Try adding the b5 and then bend it upto the 5 note of the scale for making it a bit more bluesy. Also learn the other four pentatonic shapes and extend your lead breaks into these. Be able to look at the neck in these terms. It takes a while but will break you out of that first pentatonic minor shape that quickly gets a bit stale.

Here is something to think about! When we speak do we just ramble on with words never stopping until we have nothing left to say? No. we use punctuation! We have periods that represent us having finished a complete thought, comma's representing a complete statement but not quite a complete thought yet, as in this sentence here and other punctuation like question marks, exclamation points etc...

Well it works the same with soloing. Think of your solo as a sentence!The first step is find your roots in the scale or scales if you are working on more then one. These roots will represent your beginning of the sentence and the period. Try first starting on a root messing around with 5 or 6 notes and then either going back to that root you started with or to another root in the scale depending on what area of the scale you are in at this point. Now let this note ring out. Doesn't that sound complete?

Now if we just go root to root all the time it can start to sound boring just the same as if when we speak we just use simple sentences all the time. We need to make it more interesting sounding. Let's put some comma's in there!

What our comma's are going to be is any of the other notes besides the root. Try this! Start on a root, play around with 5-7 notes and stop on any other note other then the root and let it ring out. It sounds like a statement but it doesn't sound quite complete yet does it? On a side note there are a couple notes you may land on that you may hear and say " that actually sounds complete" but still for now look at these as comma's.

Next you want to finish off the sentence! The next note you want to target is a root again. What you do is start on the note you established as your comma note or one of the notes surrounding this note, play another group of notes and finally land back on a root again. Doesn't that sound complete now?

Even if you landed on a note that sounded complete before it now sounds even more complete when you land on the root again.

So the goal here is to start with the root, play some notes, land on another note besides the root and finally land back on the root again. So when you are on a root always think "my target now is a note besides the root". When you are on this note you should then be thinking "my target now is the root". Keep doing this back and forth.

What this is called is phrasing and is incredibly important to your playing. This is the most basic form of phrasing but we need to start somewhere. This will give you a solid foundation to build from. As you get better at it you will want to add more comma's to the phrases and not always start and stop your phrases on the roots. I know not starting on the root contradicts what we just went over but for now don't worry about it. As you advance and learn more about chord tones you can experiment with this. For now it's root, other note, root.

If you get this concept down pretty well then maybe go ahead and add more comma's into your phrases. After that you should have a good feel for phrases and you can experiment with starting on other notes besides the roots. I do recommend you start to look into chord tones so you can make some intelligent choices.

Again for now in the beginning think root, other note and end on root. A complete sentence! Hope helps a little!

Like this advice here Don - +1

A long time ago I came up with an improvsation matrix for a non technnical expeimental approach to the idea of coming up with possibilities for phrasing and improvising.

I'll share it here. Imagine that you are playing a scale fragment with 4 notes.

We might list these notes as 1 2 3 4 if we played them in order.

We might list the duration as 1 (f) 2 (f) 3 (s) 4

This means from 1 to 2 the notes are played fast
From 2 to 3 the notes are played fast
And from 3 to 4 the notes are played slowly, where 3 is sustained a bit longer before playing 4.

Using this simple experimental approach, we can come up with all sorts of permutations of these two variables, and chain them in 8th notes or fast 16ths to play and "hear" potential ideas for the 4 notes.

2 s 4 f 3 s 1
3 f 4 s 3 f 1

What would that example above sound like if it were played along to a backing track in the key of the scale fragment?

To be honest Im not sure, but it could be a good idea that would get you started in building your vocabulary of notes and phrasing possibilities.

Instructor

Instructor - I like this idea. It is all too easy for scales to sound... like scales rather than music!

It is only when you inject some phrasing, timing, rhythm, rests etc that it can become something. This is something I have been conscious of for some time and am still trying to bring my scales to musical life!

Great advice so +1

Here is another easily said but maybe note as easily done technique. It's simply humming a melody and trying to duplicate it within the scale you are playing. If you completely new to this then start out by playing say a natural minor scale and try to sing the pitches as you go along. If a note doesn't sound right then try to adjust your voice to the note. This is something you'll need to continually work on for awhile but you can start the humming the melody technique strait off. You have the general sound of the scale now in your head.

Now try to sing a melody using these tones you have in your head. You may not hit everything exactly at first. As you get better at eartraining you will get better at this but even if you don't hit the exact notes you will be creating a musical phrase instead of just noodling on the scale.

The ultimate goal, which can take quite awhile to master, is to be able to play what is in your head instantly. I'm much better at it now but there are times for sure when my fingers can't quite nail what I had going in my head. I always try to stick with this technique for all my melodies though. It's much better to play with your head then from your fingers. This is a technique you will continue to work on for as long as you play the guitar. Start out by just getting as close as you can and as long as you stick with it you will soon be able to play some simple melodies. From there you can build. One book I highly recommend to help with this is Troy Stetina's Fretboard Mastery. Excellent book! I need to go back and dig into it again myself!

So as this is the A Minor Pentatonic starting on the 5th fret i can add any of the other patterns to it by leaving this pattern and joining the next on the route note of each patttern? so in effect i can play pattern one and join pattern 2 at the 8th fret together and so on and its all A ? I can then move pattern 1 allong 2 frets and i am playing the B Minor Pentatonic and can join pattern 2 to this at the 10th fret and still be in B and so on? Would this make it possible to play in any key just by moving all the patterns along but still playing the same sequence of patterns?

Thats right henry the wasp once you've learnt all the forms of a scale you can link them up so you can move laterally on the fingerboard instead of being stuck within one form which is 4 or 5 frets wide.

You should try applying the method I use in my video on linking the major scale forms, you can apply the same principles to any scale.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/linkmajorforms

Nice vid mate...

fishfingers wrote:Hi guys

I learnt a basic pentatonic scale on A chord and just wondered how easy it would be to create a mini solo from this? I have started going through the scale and move up and down the strings and add a little bending etc. Any ideas?

I know this was posted a while ago but just joined so thought I'd put my 2 cents in. Hope you are getting some good solos in with that shape but have you started using any of the other shapes yet? There are five to learn in total, but only five, which you can then apply to any key. I'm a great believer in building up all the shapes at the same time - don't worry your brain can handle it. After all it just the same amount of notes per string as the one you have already learnt just in a different pattern each time. If you spend just five minutes on each shape every day (total of 25 mins scale practice) you will be really surprised how much progress you make. The fretboard will open up before you, your solos will be less restricted and your playing confidence will grow and grow. I teach all my students with this principle in mind and they all make really good progress.

Let me know how you get on.