All pentatonic guitar scales, by definition have five notes. In western music there are two pentatonics commonly used, these are the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic. The minor pentatonic is commonly used in blues and rock music but is not limited to these genres. Many guitar solos rely on the minor pentatonic, and it is probably the most common 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 can be converted to the blues scale by simply adding a flat 5. This is also a very commonly used scale for not just blues but for many other types of music. When referring to pentatonics for guitar, often the blues scale will be included even though technically it is not a pentatonic scale.
The second pentatonic scale commonly used is the major pentatonic. This is comprised of root, 2, 3, 5, 6 degrees. This scale is also commonly used in blues guitar and country music but again is not limited to these musical genres.
If we take both of these scales we find they are commonly used together when soloing over a twelve bar blues in conjunction with the flat 5, mentioned earlier, 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.
Nick Dillon is an experienced guitar player and enjoys exploring different sounds, genres and styles of music. His musical development and creativity relies much upon his pursuit to learn guitar scales and master lead guitar playing techniques.
