Category: Scales

The pentatonic scale is a scale containing five notes. It is a very popular scale with rock and blues guitar players. If you go to the zentao pentatonic scales page you will have the basic info on the major and minor pentatonics in ten seconds flat. From there you will be on your way to impressing yourself and your friends by doing solos all over the guitar neck.

I have also found a youtube video on learning the pentatonic scale to solo over chords:

I also have a link to three video guitar lessons and a 40-page book called “How To Solo With Pentatonic Scales”. You need to supply an email address and some idea of where you are at with your guitar playing. So if you don’t want to give away your regular email go get a free one but don’t miss the opportunity to get this material to keep.

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The pentatonic scale is thought by many electric guitar players to be their exclusive property but it’s really found in all sorts of music from around the world.
According to wikipedia.org “Ethnomusicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either hemitonic or anhemitonic. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones. For example, a hemitonic pentatonic scale common in some areas of North and West Africa contains flatted 2nd, 3rd, and 6th degrees (hence, if the scale begins in C, it will contain a D-flat, E-flat, and A-flat, plus a G-natural).”
If all that is making your head spin, try reading the full article while you’re holding a guitar and get some idea of what all that theoretical stuff sounds like.
Here’s another take on it:
“The pentatonic scale is a favourite of all guitar players for rock, blues, country, jazz etc. It is easy to learn and apply. It has just two notes per string and is great for beginner to advanced guitarists alike.
You can use it for simple and easy soloing or you can use it in a very complex way suitable for jazz, fusion or contemporary hard rock or metal. You can substitute them and you can alter them. Substitute pentatonics and altered pentatonics are an excellent way to get exciting new sounds into your guitar solos, now.”
http://www.free-guitar-chords.com/pentatonic-guitar-magic.htm
And here’s a guy on a YouTube video helping to make the pentatonic scale clearer:

Technorati Tags: pentatonic scale, YouTube video

This site has maybe a little too much info on guitar scales but maybe you have the urge to read up on some background stuff, so . . .
“What is the definition of a scale?
A musical scale is a discrete set of pitches used in making or describing music. Typically a scale has an interval of repetition, which is normally the octave. This means that for any pitch in the scale, we have also an equivalent pitch an octave above and an octave below it. While the limits of human hearing are finite, matters are somewhat simplified if we ignore that fact, as is usually done in discussions of theory though of course never in practice. Because we are often interested in the relations or ratios between the pitches rather than the precise pitches themselves in describing a scale, it is usual to refer all the scale pitches in terms of their ratio from a particular pitch, which is given the value of one (often written 1/1 when discussing just intonation.) This note can be, but is not necessarily, a note which functions as the tonic of the scale. For comparison with the current standard tuning cents are often used. See also logarithmic scale.” More info at Guitar Scales Frequently Asked Questions