Connect Minor Pentatonic shapes Guitar Lesson – Step 2

Minor Scales Guitar Lesson - S2
To prove that you really do know how to play the Minor Pentatonic, you must connect all CAGED shapes!


You Don’t Know Your Minor Pentatonic Unless You Can Connect All Shapes


After playing through all individual CAGED shapes of the Minor Pentatonic in twelve keys, you need to connect the shapes up and down the neck as well.

In order for you to play an exercise like this, you have to know each individual shape really well. If you have been practising all individual shapes well enough or not, you’ll find out when you try to connect them.

Should you struggle with a particular shape, simply go back to the previous step and practise it some more.

The video lesson above shows you how to connect all five Minor Pentatonic shapes in the keys of Am and Dm.

When you can connect all shapes in Am, move on to the ten remaining keys as well.

And when you can do it in twelve keys, play it by moving to the closest shape possible.



Minor Pentatonic Cycle of 4th


The final exercise you need to practice to really cement all five shapes is the one that moves around the cycle of 4th using the closest shape possible.

This is demonstrated in detail in the video lesson above, it moves like this:

Am Minor Pentatonic Em shape – Dm Minor Pentatonic Am shape – Gm Minor Pentatonic Dm shape – Cm Minor Pentatonic Gm shape – Fm Minor Pentatonic Cm shape.

Now you’ve completed the cycle, next up is the Bbm Minor Pentatonic Em shape, then carry on as you just did.

Once you reach the Am Minor Pentatonic in a Dm shape you can stop.

When all exercises in this step feel easy, move on to the next step, to play the minor blues scale.


Minor Pentatonic Improvisation


As soon as you feel like you can play the Minor Pentatonic up and down in all shapes and keys, you must stop playing it up and down and instead start making music with it.

A good first step is to play without any chords, just like I do in the video above as this will hammer home the sound of it.

Try targeting different notes like the minor 3rd and 5th, using the other notes around the to set the target notes up.

When this feels OK, find it used in real songs. The intermediate electric course is full of examples of how to use the minor pentatonic and so is the acoustic course.

Throughout both of these courses, I point out whenever the minor pentatonic is used for chord licks, solos and melodies.

One of the best things you can do is to translate these licks to all other shapes, Wish You Were Here does this in the course, do check it out.


Connect Minor Pentatonic | Related Pages


Minor Scales | Step-by-step guitar course

The Minor Scales Course starts with the Minor Pentatonic.

Using the CAGED system and the Minor Pentatonic as our foundation, we can build all possible minor scales.

The minor scales course takes care of this in just 8 steps. All you have to do is put the time in, following the step-by-step format.


Intermediate Acoustic Course

In the Intermediate Acoustic Guitar Course we play loads of Minor Pentatonic scales.

In the Intermediate Acoustic Course, we don’t settle for just the basic open-position chords. Instead, we move up the fretboard to play what is called barre chords.

Learning these tunes will unlock the guitar fretboard as we use the CAGED system to explore the fretboard in the context of each song.



Intermediate Electric Course

The Intermediate Electric Guitar Course is packed with Minor Pentatonic licks.

When playing Motown & Soul tunes, we must know all CAGED barre chords and pentatonic scales to build rhythm parts, incorporate licks and play solos.

Complete the Intermediate Electric Course and you will map out the fretboard, as well as gain an understanding of how to create a guitar part that works in a band.


Min7 | Arpeggios

The min7 arpeggios are very similar to the Minor Pentatonic.

In this first step, we practice the min7 arpeggios in all CAGED shapes. This is easy if you know your minor pentatonic shapes.

Video lessons are available starting on an A. To complete this step, you must play starting on the remaining 11 notes as well.



Guitar Chords | The CAGED System

To understand the Minor Pentatonic, you must connect them with the CAGED guitar chord shapes.

With traditional music theory, the stave, and a piano, you’ll get easy-to-understand chords but they will not help if you want to play chords on the guitar.

Instead, on the guitar we use chord shapes derived from the five open-position chords, C, A, G, E, and D, hence CAGED.


Chordacus

Chordacus can show you all Minor Pentatonic shapes in all keys.

Spytunes chords, scale, and arpeggio software, Chordacus is a refined version of the so-called CAGED system.

Now available as both a chromatic (original version) and “within a key”, developed with the help of a Spytunes student.



About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson on the Minor Pentatonic.

This was a guitar lesson about the Minor Pentatonic, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.


Follow Spytunes

GET IN TOUCH