AboutLynne May Expertise Any question relating to guitar playing: scales, chords, music theory, arpeggios, soloing, chord progressions, key signatures, buying a guitar, guitar tabs, writing guitar music, musical styles including rock, blues and classical.
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Experience I have played guitar for 30 years. Fifteen years of that time I spent traveling nationwide as a performer. I have owned and operated May Music Studio in Washington state for the last 20 years. I also teach piano and drums.
Recently I have started a website which provides absolutely free music lessons:
http://www.may-studio-music-lessons.com
Question QUESTION: Hello, My name is Evan and I'm a self taught guitarist and I'm just learning about music theory and how scales work. I was reading a site that was talking about major and minor pentatonic scales for the guitar. It said that the formula for minor pentatonic scale is: 1, b3, 4, 5, b7, and then back to 1. And the formula for Major pentatonic is: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and then back to one. My question is, can I use these formulas to figure out if I'm in the key of C on the 8th fret of the 6th string and I want to move down to the key of G on the 3rd fret of the 6th string? I'm just now learning how to play minor pentatonic up and down the neck in the key of C and was wondering if there was some formula to help me along the way. Any advice would help, Thank you.
ANSWER: Hi, Evan--
Let's see if I can make this a little easier for you. I think you are asking how to transpose a pentatonic minor scale from one key to another.
When you are first beginning to work with these scales, it is a lot easier if you use PATTERNS instead of FORMULAS. In other words, just learn a couple of patterns for the scale and then if you want to play it in a different key, just move the pattern to that fret.
For a detailed presentation of the most commonly used patterns. Learn both patterns and then practice starting them on different frets--(ie) 3rd fret to play in G, 5th fret to play in A, etc.
QUESTION: Thank you, I really appreciate your time. But I don't think I stated my question clearly before, or what I'm saying doesn't make sense. So, I can use patterns to figure out how to play the minor pentatonic scale on different frets? For instance, if I'm on the 8th fret playing a C minor pentatonic scale, and I want to stay in the key of C and play a minor pentatonic scale but at the 3rd fret, G, I can use a pattern to figure out how to change my fingering so that I stay in the key of C but move up and down the neck to the 3rd fret and the 6th fret, etc.?
Yes, you can use patterns to stay in the same key and start on any fret. The best thing to do is try to find a diagram of all of the notes in a C pent minor scale and the n you will see their relationships on every fret.
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