The Five Positions of the Minor Pentatonic Scale for Guitar - The EASY way 

Kids these days are learning the distinct feel of all 7 modal scales at the age of 12 🥴

​@@briandorough498 when your entire family pays someone to teach you that, I'm not surprised that happens

Cheers👌

I appreciate that! Many thanks 👋

Thanks!

Thanks👌

Thanks! I'm glad this lesson helped you out! Feel free to share it around👌

That's great to hear!! Pleased to know that my videos are helping people out! Thanks for watching👌👌👌

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Fantastic!

It's the same as modes. If you shift the root of a C Major scale to D, the second note if the scale, and play all the same notes as C Major, you get D Dorian. Shift to A, the 6th note of the C Major scale, you get A aeolian, otherwise known as A minor. Learn all the modes, and you can play in every key everywhere on the fretboard, because every modal position links to every other one, and each position has it's own set of corresponding chord and arpeggio shapes. You can learn the 7 modal shapes, and that is all you need to play a scake over the entire fretboard. There are 7 modes because there are 7 notes in the scale. There are 5 pentatonic shapes because there are 5 pentatonic notes in the scale. These shapes are the pentatonic modes. You can learn the chords and arpeggios that correspond with that mode. Then you can start "playing the changes" by shifting the scale position to correspond with the chord it goes with, allowing you to more effectively pick out the notes in the chord. You can add a flatted 5 to the mix to turn it into a blues scale, mess around with using a major and minor third in the same lick, another typical blues thing. You can also start using the pentatonic scale as a framework to add other notes from the diatonic scale, since the pentatonic is simply all the most "good sounding" notes it's the scale that you can't play a wrong note with. You can use it as a safe foundation that you can venture out of as much as you dare. This is how players like Eddie Van Halen were able to play a chaotic barrage of very fast mostly "wrong" notes and always somehow land on a note that sounded good. Eddie described this as "falling down the stairs and landing on your feet"

The minor pentatonic is simply the minor (aeolian) scale with the 2nd and the 6th left out of it. So you can add those notes in whenever you want for more more emotional effect. Personally I love playing half steps. Pentatonic is a diatonic scale with no half steps in it. You can look at these things from multiple different angles, but really it's very simple in theory. The hard part is teaching your fingers to play it everywhere without you needing to think about it.

Cheers, it's much appreciated!

Glad you think so! Feel free to share it around!

No probs!

Awesome, thank you!

Glad it helped!

Thanks!

🤣 thanks!

No problem, Thanks for watching!

Brilliant! Many thanks!!

Thank-you! It's very much appreciated 👌

Thank-you! It's much appreciated 👌

Awesome thank you!

@@Samjamguitar you're welcome 🤗

@@Samjamguitar and thank YOU!

Many thanks!

Short term perhaps. In the long term, learning the 5 positions is far more beneficial and ties together perfectly with CAGED and any other positions of modes/arpeggios/scales etc across the fretboard! Plus I have never encountered a student that struggled with simply starting with position 1 of the minor pentatonic scale, it's such an easy pattern to learn and use immediately!

Glad to help! Thanks for continuing to come back and watch!

Brilliant!! Really great to hear comments like this!

That's a great way to visualize any 5 position system. However where CAGED is concerned, pattern 1 is always tied to the E shape... the correct order of CAGED is actually EDCAG. watch my CAGED series, which goes into this in more depth. This way every scale chord arpeggio etc all lines up.

Thanks, I will watch it. Yeah G Shape is position 5 but I memorise it as position 1 and it all fell into place that way. I don’t look at them as positions but as G shape etc. I never get lost anymore and improvise all over the neck with ease. I’m too old to relearn lol … Position 1 is the start of the minor and Position 2 is the start of the major, if that makes sense. Seems to work for me. Thanks for your reply. Your videos are outstanding and very much appreciated!

It certainly does.

love the beck pfp

It's actually something I'm considering! Watch this space...

Awesome!

You have to think of it as a circle of positions...or better yet a conveyor belt. Position 5 joins back up with position 1. So, in the key of Dminor, you could travel backwards through each position until you reach the nut or upwards until you run out of fretboard.

@@Samjamguitar do do you mean do position 1 on D the go down 5,4,3,2? I’m still kinda confused here

That's it yes!

@@Samjamguitar I see! Thanks man I appreciate it

@Shred_Master no problem! It's best at this stage to go through the process of learning each position and using them as described in the video! Also check out my LEAD guitar playlist, this will walk you through each position in isolation before moving on to the next! In these videos I also discuss how they fit together/changing keys and also directly address the issue you had... highly recommend going through each one by one👌

Start with a minor key backing track. Any minor key. Most if the backing tracks are either major or natural minor, not modal. From there just shift the first position shape so the root note is the same as the backing track. If the backing track is Am, then play the first position on starting on the 5th fret. If your backing track is in a major key, then use the second position as your starting point. So if you're a playing C Major backing track, you'll start with the second position on 8th fret, which is actually all the same notes since C Major and A minor are literally the same scale with different starting points.

Glad to help!!

No problem👌 all the patterns look the same and fit together in the same way when playing in different keys. For example if you changed to the key of A then you would start from the A note on the E string 5th fret and play position 1, after this positions 2-5 would slot together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

@@Samjamguitar thankyou so much...