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 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.
