Minor Pentatonic

The minor pentatonic scale is a five-tone minor scale common in blues, rock, pop, funk and other styles. We’ll start with the common tonality of E. Here are the notes, tones, and intervallic structure.

E minor pentatonic, boxes 1 – 5

The patterns are often called boxes because of their two-note-per-string shapes. Notice that box 1 includes all the open strings.

Fingering: Box 1 is in open position, box 2 is in second position, box 3 is in fifth position (stretch back a fret on the G string), box 4 is in seventh position, and box 5 is in ninth position. An alternate approach is to use fingers 1 and 3 for each pattern (except open). Or you may combine them, playing the lower (wider) frets with positional fingering, and the higher (narrower) frets with fingers 1 and 3.

Here is how they all fit together. Play up box 1, down 2, up 3, down 4, and up 5. Then reverse it and come back down. Do this until the whole sequence is memorized. The staff-tab below will get you started.

The top of box 1 forms the bottom of box 2, the top of box 2 forms the bottom of box 3, etc.

Above box 5, the patterns continue starting again with box 1. The shapes are exactly the same, with everything shifted up twelve frets.

If you put these two sections together, you have the entire neck! Although at first glance this may look like a bit of a mess, if you have already memorized the shapes and sequence, you’ll find nothing new here.

To find specific boxes more quickly, use the E minor chords in boxes 1 and 4, shown in the bottom diagram, as “anchor points.”

E minor pentatonic, diagonal shapes

The minor pentatonic scale may also be played in diagonal shapes which cut across several boxes. The most common diagonal shapes of E minor pentatonic are centered on boxes 1 and 4.

Here is E minor pentatonic box 1, or the primary box, shown first with its low extension (into box 5), then with its high extension (into box 2), and finally, the full diagonal shape.

Here is E minor pentatonic box 4, or secondary box, first with its low extension (into box 3 and lower), then with its high extension (into box 5), and finally, the full diagonal shape.

Fingering: These diagonal shapes involve shifting positions. As a rule, try playing all notes available in a given position before you shift positions. So playing the first example above (Box 1) from the lowest note, you would begin in tenth position and use the fingering 1-3-1-3, then shift into twelfth position and play the next note with your third finger. Reverse this for descending.

Other tonalities

Now we’ll consider other tonalities. This simply requires that the entire series of boxes is shifted up or down the neck. While shifting just one or two frets is easily accomplished, shifting three or more frets can become confusing. Therefore, it is a good idea to memorize at least the common keys shown here. First play the anchor chords shown under the series of boxes to get your “bearings,” then play up and down the boxes over the entire neck in that key.

At this point, you have learned the minor pentatonic scale in E, G, A, and C. For the remaining “in between” keys—F, F♯, G♯, B♭, B, C♯, D, and D♯—simply take the nearest key and slide up or down a fret or two, to place the root of the pattern on the correct pitch. (See page 63 for note names on the neck, if necessary.)

Sequencing practice

Several different sequence patterns are applied to a few minor pentatonic scales to help get you started with this practice concept. Apply each of these sequences to each of the minor pentatonic scale patterns learned so far in all the various keys.