Minor pentatonic scale patterns

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by JonPR

It's crazy how many guitar players seem to learn scale patterns without either (a) knowing the notes in them or (b) knowing the chords they fit. And then they wonder why they get confused about how to apply them...

It's also crazy how many guitar players want to "solo" without understanding what improvisation means.

[/rant]

I agree with you. I do understand that a person does have to start somewhere. Hopefully once a person learns something they will follow it up with learning another thing. Complete understand is a life long endeavor. As to your last point I like the outlook that when a person is playing they need to listen to the music being played and to what they are playing. As an listener of the final product. In this way they are focusing on what the music is expressing and the choices they have available to best accomplish the goal of the song being played.

[rickcrna]

I always enjoy reading the "learning pentatonic scale" threads as I've been trying to slay this dragon for sometime. Admittedly, I'm hoping for such a clear visual explanation that the proverbial lightbulb goes off and I arrive at the AHA moment. A lot of my learning problem is that I tend to overthink and over analyze and this only adds to the haze and unnecessary steepness of the learning curve.

I appreciate everyone's input and suggestions and will take the time to digest the information and graphics and see if I can make sense of the fretboard.

[saxonblue]

Also worth considering those patterns as your major pentatonics as well by utilising the standard relative minor/major relationships eg: your Em pentatonic is the same scale as your Gmaj pentatonic with the root note being the next one played. Same with Am/Cmaj, Dm/Fmaj etc.

Another way of seeing that is that once you get familiar with the position of the patterns in a particular minor key you only have to slide or transpose those patterns down 3 fret positions & you are now playing in the same key but as major, not minor. It seems a commonplace practice & it adds a lot more colour/character to a solo. Years ago while trying to decipher some Clapton solos (mostly unsuccessfully ) I worked if he was playing a 12 bar in E he was playing the first couple of bars in Emaj, then swapping back to Em then back & forth at will but still using mostly the pentatonics plus his normal arsenal of hammers, bends etc.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by rickcrna

I always enjoy reading the "learning pentatonic scale" threads as I've been trying to slay this dragon for sometime. Admittedly, I'm hoping for such a clear visual explanation that the proverbial lightbulb goes off and I arrive at the AHA moment. A lot of my learning problem is that I tend to overthink and over analyze and this only adds to the haze and unnecessary steepness of the learning curve.

I appreciate everyone's input and suggestions and will take the time to digest the information and graphics and see if I can make sense of the fretboard.

Chord diagrams, scale patterns ,CAGED system these are shortcuts to learning the fretboard, unfortunately the cost of such shortcuts is that they really hamper developing an understanding of the relationships between tones and chords which is the stuff of which music is made.
Years ago I was lucky enough to meet a pro jazz guitarist known as Curly Clayton, very generous with his time he gave me a few free lessons and began by taking me over to the piano in his studio and explained that the repeating pattern was a reflection of the pattern of tones in a major scale, 2 full tones semi tone three full tones and a semi tone takes you back to the tonic 1 octave up.Curly then pointed out the frets on a guitar are all one semi tone appart and that the open strings sound the notes EADGBE. Then we sat down and with many sheets of paper he just got me to note down how that pattern is modified to produce the different scales and telling me to throw away any chord dictionary he got me to make notes on how to find more chords and scales than I would ever use.
I had music lessons at school for years but no teacher ever gave me the tools needed
to begin understanding how music works, so thanks Curly I'll allways be gratefull he took the time to explain.
Honestly rickcrna forget the diagrams and all that stuff, just pick the simplest three note version of any minor chord you know and add the two notes necessary to turn that minor arpegio into a minor pentatonic scale, do that with the chords of A minor and E minor and that will give you a six note scale. Record a simple chord progression on an app like Chordbot, just a few bars going back and forth between Aminor and Eminor and resolving to Aminor, when the Am chord is playing use notes from the Am pent scale, when Em chord is playing use notes from the Em pent scale . And have some fun with it, if you think about the problem of two notes a semi tone appart you will understand why it's better to approach things this way round.