Pentatonic Guitar Scales and Soloing
Pentatonic guitar scales are commonly the starting point for many guitarists when first learning lead guitar. They are highly useful for soloing and can be applied to many different genres of music, including blues, rock and country.
By definition, all pentatonic guitar scales have five notes. The two common pentatonic scales used in western music are the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic scales. A similar scale to the minor pentatonic scale is the commonly used blues scale.
The minor pentatonic is commonly used in blues and rock music but is not limited to these musical genres. Many guitar solos rely on the minor pentatonic, and it is generally a very popular scale used for lead guitar playing. The minor pentatonic is composed of: root, flat 3, 4, 5 and flat 7 scale degrees.
The minor pentatonic scale can be changed to the blues scale by adding a flat 5. This is also a very popular scale for not just blues but for many other types of music. When discussing pentatonics for guitar, often the blues scale will be included even though technically it is not a pentatonic scale. It contains : root, flat 3, 4, flat 5, 5 and flat 7 scale degrees. This scale is often regarded as the most popular scale for lead guitar playing.
A versatile and useful scale is the major pentatonic scale. The scale steps are root, 2, 3, 5, 6 degrees. This scale is also frequently used in country music and blues but again is not limited to these styles. If we take the two of these scales we find they are normally used jointly when soloing over a twelve bar blues together with the flat 5, mentioned previously, from the blues scale.
To learn lead guitar it is important to learn the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic guitar scales. These can be used for guitar solos in almost any style of music and contain the common notes that the diatonic modes are constructed around. These scales are an important starting point when learning lead guitar.
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