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The minor pentatonic scale, the most popular scale used for lead guitar in rock and blues music is dark and bluesy.
There are many different ways to look at the minor pentatonic scale like all the other scales. Okay, just start to look at how it is called. Minor Pentatonic Scale => Minor and penta and tonic. Let's analyze these 3 words. What do you think?
Minor: The scale should sound minor and also we know from the An Introduction to Guitar Pentatonic Scales article that it is derived from the natural minor scale. Penta means five and tonic represents the notes in the scale. Then we can say that the minor pentatonic scale is a part of the minor scale and has just five notes.
Here comes the question: Which part of the minor scale and why?
The five notes of the minor pentatonic scale are the first, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh notes of the natural minor scale. Or we can just say we left out the second and sixth notes of the natural minor scale. By skipping these two notes the scale has a more primal character and still keeps the properties which makes a scale minor. The scale has no half steps so that the scale is more suitable for an aggressive sound. And it is easier to play and remember five notes than seven notes on the fretboard.
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G A Bb C D Eb F G
G minor scale
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The second and sixth notes of the minor scale marked red. If you play the minor scale just skipping these two notes what you play is exactly the minor pentatonic scale.
Minor pentatonic scale formula:
1 b3 4 5 b7
=>
A and Eb skipped (2nd, 6th)
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G Bb C D F G
G minor pentatonic scale
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Because G minor is the relative minor of Bb major these two keys must consist of the same notes. The difference is the root note, in other words, the tonic. This also must be the same for C major and A minor and so on.
Let's take a look:
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A minor pentatonic scale
A C D E G
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You can easily see that A minor pentatonic scale and C major pentatonic scale have the same notes. Because they are relative minor and relative major of eachothers. According to this information we can sure say that they have exactly the same scale boxes and scale patterns on the fretboard. We discuss this subject in scale box patterns lessons. |
C major pentatonic scale
C D E G A
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If you are playing a major pentatonic scale and know the relative minor of this major key, you can also play the relative minor pentatonic scale of this major scale just changing the root note or vice versa.
Is it confusing? Okay, please take a look the images above C Major pentatonic scale and A minor pentatonic scale. They both have exactly the same notes. Then what makes them different. The difference is intervals in the scales and the key notes of course. If you know one, it means you also know the other. But the minor pentatonic scale sounds bluesy and dark while the major one sounds happy and bright. Because the minor pentatonic scale contains b3 and b7 intervals which makes the scale blue.
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