The 5 Minor Pentatonic Shapes Guitar Lesson – Step 1

Minor Scales Guitar Lesson - S1
The best way to understand and being able to play all minor scales is to start with the Minor Pentatonic and then build from there!


The Most Important Scale To Learn


If you’re only going to learn one scale to solo with on the guitar it would have to be the Minor Pentatonic.

Perhaps, you’ve heard of The Minor Pentatonicposition 1? That’s the one you play for the open position in the key of Em or between frets 5-8 in the key of Am. They call it position 1 only because that’s the first one we all learn.

This is one of the greatest mistakes guitar players make, don’t call it position 1, call it by its CAGED name, which is the Em shape. Leave the number for describing chords as then the number has an actual meaning.

Being precise in your speech like this is imperative in order to perfectly understand the guitar fretboard.

When practising as the video lessons demonstrate, aim to clearly see the relationship between the barre chord shape and scale shapes.

Once this connection is clear, take note of all intervals inside every scale shape.



Practice the Minor Pentatonic in 12 Keys


To get great at playing scales you must do what legendary sax player Charlie Parker did and practice in all twelve keys.

When you can play all these shapes in the key of Am, move on and practice them in the key of Dm, just like I demonstrate in the playlist above.

When you can do this without making mistakes, carry on down the cycle of 4th. Next up would be the keys of Gm, Cm, Fm, Bbm, etc.

Spend enough time on this step (that means days and weeks of practice). One day you’ll be playing a Cm-shaped Eb Minor Pentatonic, thinking to yourself, I can do this!

This is the moment you move on to the next step, connecting the Minor Pentatonic shapes.



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.


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.


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