# Learning Pentatonic Scales?



## Amaranthine Vitality (Aug 30, 2013)

For those out there who are proficient in their pentatonic scales, I'm curious if they are worth learning or if I should just spend my time learning some more complex scales?
So if anyone has been helped by learning their pentatonics please share and provide examples, thanks.


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## Osorio (Aug 30, 2013)

What you are talking about is essentially skipping steps... I know a lot of guitarists who seem to be all about this concept, but I highly advice against it.

Learning to work your pentatonics will enable you to find very musical lines with very strong resolutions, while maintaining a highly straightforward path. You can add more notes further down the road, but knowing how to resolve your phrases will go a long way towards creating a meaningful sound.


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## Amaranthine Vitality (Aug 30, 2013)

^interesting, thanks for the reply


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## yingmin (Aug 30, 2013)

This is another case where I feel like people make things more complicated than they need to be. A pentatonic scale is, as the name suggests, a scale with five notes, while a standard major or minor scale has seven. The most common is the minor pentatonic, which is just a natural minor scale with the second and sixth notes omitted. Take E minor, for example: E F# G A B C D E. Now remove the second and sixth notes: F# and B. that is E minor pentatonic. What's important to note is that F# and B are the most "difficult" notes in the original scale. B and F# form a diminished fifth with each other, and a minor second with C and G, respectively. Without those two, no two notes clash with each other any more. That's a huge part of why pentatonic scales are so popular: they are incredibly consonant, and it's a lot easier to play something that sounds good if you remove the notes that are likely to cause problems. You can try this with other scales, and remove different intervals, and get a different result. This gets at what I said in the beginning: don't "learn pentatonic scales", but learn what a pentatonic scale IS, and the rest should fall into place.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 30, 2013)

Amaranthine Vitality said:


> For those out there who are proficient in their pentatonic scales, I'm curious if they are worth learning or if I should just spend my time learning some more complex scales?
> So if anyone has been helped by learning their pentatonics please share and provide examples, thanks.



I think you should learn both, but it's more beneficial to pick four or five notes in a diatonic scale and then go all Friedman.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 30, 2013)

yingmin said:


> Take E minor, for example: E F# G A B C D E. Now remove the second and sixth notes: F# and *C*. that is E minor pentatonic.


Fixed. 

You omit B in A Minor Pentatonic, not E Minor. E Minor is E G A B D E. A Minor is A C D E G A.





> B and F# form a diminished fifth with each other



Also wrong. B and F# is a perfect fifth. Drop B tuning is B F# B E G# C#. And the reverse, F# to B, is a perfect 4th.


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## yingmin (Aug 30, 2013)

Haha, whoops. I meant C. It's been a long day.


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## MrPepperoniNipples (Aug 30, 2013)

well, answer me this

why would you not learn your pentatonics?
there are so many things you can do with those 5 notes in just about any genre of music.

I think the reason some people may decide to skip them is because they lack creativity and can't see beyond the traditional 2 note-per-string shapes and old school rock and roll approach,
so I urge you to take the time to learn your pentatonics.



I'll also add that the scale is also a great help for learning various techniques, at the very least.
I think the 2 note per string scales are amazing for getting the hang of alternate picking, since you can easily make different licks that focus on a certain mechanic of alternate picking.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 30, 2013)

MrPepperoniNipples said:


> well, answer me this
> 
> why would you not learn your pentatonics?
> there are so many things you can do with those 5 notes in just about any genre of music.
> ...



There's nothing wrong with that. It's worked for over fifty years so why try and reinvent the wheel.


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## MrPepperoniNipples (Aug 30, 2013)

Spaced Out Ace said:


> There's nothing wrong with that. It's worked for over fifty years so why try and reinvent the wheel.



oh, of course not!
didn't mean anything negative by that sentence at all

I just think a lot of younger guys today (especially in metal) hear the word "pentatonic" and cringe, and instantly think that old classic rock sound, and don't think that the scale can be applied in death metal and what not.


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## MoshJosh (Aug 30, 2013)

I told my instructor I hadn't spent much time on the pentatonic scale exercises he had given me and focused more on some of the more difficult exercises that pertained to the music I like to play and he suggested I don't write off the pentatonic as it is used in all kinds of genres and is definitely an important scale to know. . . plus its not a difficult scale to learn so yeah thats my two cents


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## Amaranthine Vitality (Aug 31, 2013)

thanks for the feedback all. I think I'm gonna go ahead and study the pentatonic scale and its modes!


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## Hollowway (Aug 31, 2013)

There's great info in this thread. I know the pentatonic minor scale, and have tried playing solos in it, but I inevitably sound like I'm playing the blues, and it frustrates me that I can't make anything sound cool. 

So here's another question: Is there really just one pentatonic scale that most of us would use? (i.e. the major and minor are relative, and any modes are relative)? Or are there other pentatonics that I should know? i.e. if someone says "pentatonic scale" can I assume we're all talking about the same thing?


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## HolographicUniverse (Aug 31, 2013)

Definitely learn it all across the neck. It's very useful because I use it to visualise the notes on the fretboard. Think of it being like a 'skeleton' which you can flesh out by adding/changing notes to create different and interesting sounding scales. Once you memorise say, the minor pentatonic, you can easily identify the minor 3rds, 4ths, 5ths m6ths & m7ths which you can all manipulate and add notes to your liking.


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## MrPepperoniNipples (Aug 31, 2013)

Hollowway said:


> There's great info in this thread. I know the pentatonic minor scale, and have tried playing solos in it, but I inevitably sound like I'm playing the blues, and it frustrates me that I can't make anything sound cool.
> 
> So here's another question: Is there really just one pentatonic scale that most of us would use? (i.e. the major and minor are relative, and any modes are relative)? Or are there other pentatonics that I should know? i.e. if someone says "pentatonic scale" can I assume we're all talking about the same thing?



I was referring to the so called traditional pentatonic scale, but a pentatonic scale would be any scale with 5 notes. ie. the Hirajoshi, scale is pentatonic.

As for the traditional 'rock and blue' pentatonic scale, it's all about context! I think the best way to utilize the scale without sounding bluesy really depends on the lick being played, what happens before/after the lick, and what chords/rhythm it's being used over.
Marty Friedman uses it in a lot of Megadeth solos without sounding bluesy at all.

But an easy way to find new ways to make the scale not sound bluesy would be to deviate from 2nps shapes. Guys like Derryl Gabel, Derek Taylor, Scott Stine, Christian Muenzner, and many more use various pentatonic shapes and techniques to get unique sounds out of the scale. Granted, these sorts of licks and passages are generally really physically challenging, but I think they do demonstrate that there is a lot one can do with the scale.


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## Hollowway (Aug 31, 2013)

MrPepperoniNipples said:


> I was referring to the so called traditional pentatonic scale, but a pentatonic scale would be any scale with 5 notes. ie. the Hirajoshi, scale is pentatonic.
> 
> As for the traditional 'rock and blue' pentatonic scale, it's all about context! I think the best way to utilize the scale without sounding bluesy really depends on the lick being played, what happens before/after the lick, and what chords/rhythm it's being used over.
> Marty Friedman uses it in a lot of Megadeth solos without sounding bluesy at all.
> ...



You have any examples of those? I find that I learn best by playing what others have done to see their approach, and most of the stuff I'm currently playing is not (I believe) pentatonic. Iirc the solo in Stairway to Heaven is entirely pentatonic, which is a great example of something that sounds really good, and not bluesy (relatively speaking, since it is a Zep song).


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 31, 2013)

MrPepperoniNipples said:


> I was referring to the so called traditional pentatonic scale, but a pentatonic scale would be any scale with 5 notes. ie. the Hirajoshi, scale is pentatonic.
> 
> As for the traditional 'rock and blue' pentatonic scale, it's all about context! I think the best way to utilize the scale without sounding bluesy really depends on the lick being played, what happens before/after the lick, and what chords/rhythm it's being used over.
> Marty Friedman uses it in a lot of Megadeth solos without sounding bluesy at all.
> ...



You could try something like this:


```
e|--------------------------------------17h19-t22p19p17--------------|
B|--------------------------------17-20-----------------20b22~-------|
G|-----------------------14-16/19------------------------------------|
D|-----------------14-17---------------------------------------------|
A|--------12-14/17---------------------------------------------------|
E|--12-15------------------------------------------------------------|
```


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 31, 2013)

Hollowway said:


> I know the pentatonic minor scale, and have tried playing solos in it, but I inevitably sound like I'm playing the blues, and it frustrates me that I can't make anything sound cool.



Ace Frehley bro. And Angus Young. Oh and Tony Iommi. After that, if you can't use pentatonics to make non-bluesy sounding solos out of it [which there is nothing wrong with that anyways], between Page, Iommi, Frehley and Young, there's really not much more I can do to help you out. Maybe someone else can, though. I'm kinda curious though how great a solo one can make using 7 note scales if they can't manage using 5 note scales.

One piece of advice though, don't play every note in sequence; you run the risk of sounding amateur. Also, chromatic passing tones work well too.


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## Oneirokritikos (Aug 31, 2013)

Technically and theoretically, pentatonics are a foundation upon which awesome things can be built - they are one of the many ways outside sounds are produced in jazzy music, for instance. As for the technique, it doesn&#8217;t always have to be 2nps, as this example shows:

Rick Graham speed pentatonic lick


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 31, 2013)

Hollowway said:


> There's great info in this thread. I know the pentatonic minor scale, and have tried playing solos in it, but I inevitably sound like I'm playing the blues, and it frustrates me that I can't make anything sound cool.
> 
> So here's another question: Is there really just one pentatonic scale that most of us would use? (i.e. the major and minor are relative, and any modes are relative)? Or are there other pentatonics that I should know? i.e. if someone says "pentatonic scale" can I assume we're all talking about the same thing?



"Pentatonic scale" is common parlance for this pitch collection, and any rotation thereof: C D E G A

However, any scale that contains five tones is technically a pentatonic scale. The Hirajoshi scale has been mentioned, and there are a handful of other Japanese pentatonic scales (Iwato, Insen, In, Minyo come to mind). With all of those, you'll find that they fit somewhere into the Western diatonic scale, with various tones omitted. I'm not saying that the two harmonic worlds are historically related, but merely that the intervals are. At any rate, the "omissions" give a unique sound to the modal material.

Jeff Loomis - Jato Unit


(From 3:04 to 3:07, there's one of those Japanese scales. Iwato, I think; I can't check to make certain right now. The instances of the minor pentatonic scale here are all fairly bluesy, unfortunately. Forgetting scales, I always go for the intervals that sound right and don't worry so much about scale, chord, key, tonality, and the like. Have a good intervallic map in your mind, and your choices become clearer.)

Then there are scales like Slendro from Java that you cannot play on your guitar without some serious adjustment. My advice: learn everything you can so you can use it when you need to. That doesn't mean that you should spend twenty-nine hours a day cycling through every scale in the world during your practice, but broadening your knowledge and training your ear to identify these things is not a bad idea.

Pentatonicism is not a path that I follow very closely. To me, it all sounds fairly similar. I can accept it as an effect, but any individual scale is lame as a harmonic system. Variety is the spice of life, and it's also the spice of everything else.

George Crumb - A Little Suite For Christmas, A.D. 1979 - VII. Carol of the Bells


^ Even when George Crumb does it, pentatonicism sounds like an ethnic stereotype from a 1940's Warner Brothers cartoon.



Amaranthine Vitality said:


> thanks for the feedback all. I think I'm gonna go ahead and study the pentatonic scale and its modes!


Know that the pentatonic scale is a melodic scale. As venneer pointed out, the tensions and resolutions we feel in harmony come from the two tones the pentatonic scale omits. Sure, check out pentatonic stuff, but also remember that the meat and potatoes of our music is the major/minor modal system and not pentatonicism.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 31, 2013)

Oneirokritikos said:


> Technically and theoretically, pentatonics are a foundation upon which awesome things can be built - they are one of the many ways outside sounds are produced in jazzy music, for instance. As for the technique, it doesnt always have to be 2nps, as this example shows:
> 
> Rick Graham speed pentatonic lick



Quite an odd backing track.


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## Hollowway (Aug 31, 2013)

Oneirokritikos said:


> Technically and theoretically, pentatonics are a foundation upon which awesome things can be built - they are one of the many ways outside sounds are produced in jazzy music, for instance. As for the technique, it doesnt always have to be 2nps, as this example shows:
> 
> Rick Graham speed pentatonic lick



That's cool. I think just playing horizontally helps, rather than just vertically. Which might be the problem, because I play non-pentatonic stuff much more horizontally, but when I try to play strict pentatonic stuff, since I'm not versed in it I tend to stick to a remedial vertical pattern (with the 2nps stuff you guys were talking about).


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 31, 2013)

Hollowway said:


> That's cool. I think just playing horizontally helps, rather than just vertically. Which might be the problem, because I play non-pentatonic stuff much more horizontally, but when I try to play strict pentatonic stuff, since I'm not versed in it I tend to stick to a remedial vertical pattern (with the 2nps stuff you guys were talking about).



Here's some ways to improve on that:

This first one breaks you out of the box patterns, and a chromatic ascension from D to E could have a really interesting sound.


```
e|--------------------------------------15-17-19---------------------|
B|--------------------------------15-17------------------------------|
G|-----------------------12-14-16------------------------------------|
D|-----------------12-14---------------------------------------------|
A|--------10-12-14---------------------------------------------------|
E|--10-12------------------------------------------------------------|
```

This next thing basically descends three minor pentatonic boxes in the key of E, starting on the G, dictating the key. The fact it doesn't play the octave causes tension, which the last bend, which is a step and a half, resolves. If it went down the neck, I would've resolved this and used it in a different context, so keep that in mind.


```
e|--15-12-------------17-15-------------19-17-15---------------------|
B|--------15-12-------------17-15----------------17-15-17b--19--r-17-|
G|--------------14----------------16---------------------------------|
D|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------|


e|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|--17p15----17p15----17p15----17b--19--r-17-17p15--17b20~-----------|
G|--------16-------16-------16---------------------------------------|
D|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
```


Last, but not least -- and I'll admit, this isn't really my taste or style nor am I very good at certain aspects of it -- Here's a string skipping sweep tapping sorta thing. Oh and it's from the A minor pentatonic but in the key of E. (E G A C D E). The raised fifth in this case is kinda odd. Might be best played over a G5 or C5 chord.


```
e|------------12-15p12------------------12-15p12-t20p15p12-t22p15p12-|
B|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----12-t17----------t17p12----12-t17------------------------------|
D|--14------------------------14-------------------------------------|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------|


e|--t20/22-12h15p12\10-----------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------12-10-----------------------------------------|
G|---------------------------12-11-12-11-12-11-12~---12-11-10-9------|
D|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------|


e|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|--12-11-10-9-12-11-10-9-------------------------9------------------|
D|------------------------12b--14---------------(14)-----14r12\------|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
```



Overall, these are to give you a little insight on how to use notes outside of the Pentatonic scale in ways that sound good without having to learn different scales, as well as get you out of box patterns.


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## tyler_faith_08 (Aug 31, 2013)

The biggest thing that I've gathered here is that there is a lack of emphasis on learning it and finding a way to apply it (save one post). It's like this, there are only so many things that there are to learn with music. Now, there are a LOT but once you learn something, that's one more thing you don't have to learn. 

Learn the minor pentatonic scale and see what you can do with this. It can be played in the same position as the minor scale, but where else can it be used? Try to find those places. See what it has to offer and see what happens if you add say one or both notes back to it after focusing on the minor pentatonic. 

For me, I'll play it and come back after I've established a basic idea and add maybe a minor second and minor sixth to keep a very similar idea interesting. OR, I'll do the opposite and remove the 2 and 6 on the second passage of the nearly same type to give it a few more options.

You _can_ learn the pentatonic scale from a theory point and all of the implications and listen to examples, all of which are good, but you still need to learn the practical side of it and what it means to _you_. How does it fit in to what you think about music? Can you execute it during improvisation? Can you think with it and incorporate it into your music? Can you uderstand all of the relationships that it has to everything else? 

Just go for it. Take me for example. I would only play minor and diminished stuff for years. I'd use whole half or half whole, the whole tone scale and all of this other dark, tense stuff non-stop. I always hated anything resembling the major scale and neglected it because of it's happier and (as I considered at the time) colorless feel. Then I began collaboration with a formally educated bassist who impressed upon me the importance of learning to use everything. After a few months, I'd jsut about mastered modes and I started to see jsut how interconnected everything was. I know good and well that if I'd just learned to use and appreciate the major scale and what it has to offer, I'd have been much further along than I am now. 

Don't neglect to learn anything. You'll see how it all fits together one day. The more you know, the quicker you can potentially see how everything relates as a whole.


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## Cloudy (Aug 31, 2013)

I still jump back to pentatonic every few days, its definitely the most entertaining scale I ever learned to jam on.

Skippin over it is definitely cutting corners in my book, the more you know the better am I right?


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## celticelk (Aug 31, 2013)

Bear in mind that pentatonics can be creatively relocated through superimposition: play a pentatonic scale with a different root than the prevailing tonality. This leads to some very interesting sounds: G minor pentatonic (G Bb C D F) over an E background, for example, yields a very tense set of altered notes (b3 b5 #5/b13 b7 b9) which you can then resolve by returning to an E minor pentatonic pitch set. G# minor pentatonic (G# B C# D# F#), in contrast, produces a very major sound against E (3 5 6 7 9), which you could use in places where you might otherwise play an E major or E Lydian line. Experiment with other transpositions and see what tweaks your ear.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Aug 31, 2013)

tyler_faith_08 said:


> The biggest thing that I've gathered here is that there is a lack of emphasis on learning it and finding a way to apply it (save one post).



And what post is that?


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## Dayn (Aug 31, 2013)

Two frequent quotes:

Diatonic scale: _It just sounds like a scale run._
Pentatonic: _It sounds too bluesy.

_I think I know how to fix both of those together. It relies on the pentatonic, and the notes that it _doesn't_ have.

To avoid sounding like a scale run, skip some tones to add some space to your intervals. The pentatonic usually skips the 2 and 6. Of course it depends on the type of music you're playing, but I find those to be less crucial and more for flavour as they're far less likely to be part of any chord. Pentatonic successfully incorporated, and you're now not just running through a scale. And conversely, use the 2 and 6 in a pentatonic.

If I'm in a minor key, I like to use the b6 for flavour. Say you played E F E C D G A~:
E|---------------------|
B|---------------------|
G|-9h10p9--------------|
D|-------h10/12--------|
A|--------------10/12~-|
E|---------------------|

It has the 1, b3, 4, 5 and b7 of the minor pentatonic... and the b6 from the natural minor scale to add a bit of flavour. It's just missing the 2. So what is it? Pentatonic with an extra note for flavour, or a natural minor scale simply not using the 2 and having space between intervals?

It's all about synthesising everything you've learned into one contiguous body of musical knowledge and using it when appropriate, rather than sticking to one discrete concept and running with it to the exclusion of all else.
 
That's how I approach it. The pentatonic isn't a separate scale, it's just missing some notes to add space. I find it important to know when that space is necessary, and when little embellishments such as the above b6 can be used.


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## birch (Sep 1, 2013)

Totaly agree with Celticelk. The minor pentatonic is not only great for starting out, it also offers loads for advanced improvisers.

Here's some uses:
Over Maj7 chords, the pentatonic sounds good played from the 3rd (gives 2,3,5,6,7) and from the 7th (gives 2,3,#4,6,7)
Over Min7, play from the 2nd (gives 1,2,4,5,6) and the 5th (gives 1,2,4,5,b7)
Over Dom7 alt., play up a b3 (gives b2,b3,b5,b6,b7)
Over Min7b5, play up a 4th (gives 1,b3,4,b6,b7)
Over 7susb9, play up a b7 (gives b2,b3,4,b6,b7)

Mapping out the scale using 3 notes per string also makes it easy to include intervals of a 4th in your legato lines.

Also, our guitars are tuned to E min pentatonic, so you cant escape it!


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## tyler_faith_08 (Sep 2, 2013)

Spaced Out Ace said:


> And what post is that?


 
I'm not disclosing that, wondering is 90% of the fun!


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## Ckackley (Sep 2, 2013)

The minor pentatonic is super easy to get your bearings with and ALWAYS works. If you ever plan on jamming with anyone outside of your bedroom you need to learn these scales. They're quick to jump to when improvising with minimal thought so you can play "in the moment" without sitting there running a bunch of theory through your head. Grab the root note and you're off and running. (This from a guy who finds the greatest joy and magic in music is spontaneous music creation through jamming, your results may differ. lol )


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## David Portelli (Sep 2, 2013)

Amaranthine Vitality said:


> For those out there who are proficient in their pentatonic scales, I'm curious if they are worth learning or if I should just spend my time learning some more complex scales?
> So if anyone has been helped by learning their pentatonics please share and provide examples, thanks.



I still like to use pentatonic scales in my playing, I feel that it's one good way to break out of the usual diatonic sound.

In rock music you can get more out of the pentatonic scales by adding the blues note or by creating passing notes in between the notes of the actual scale.

Another nice thing about the pentatonic scales is that since you always have 2 notes missing (compared to the diatonic scales) your options are more open and the scales fit in more places.

I think Eric Johnson has some cool vids on this subject, he's the expert 

/Dave


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## Alphanumeric (Sep 2, 2013)

Popular Vai choice is to do the relative major pentatonic and relative lydian over the root minor pent, ala Love Of God.

The relative lydian is the tension, and the relative major the release, Vai likes to resolve away from the root a lot, so not always going back to that minor pent, instead going from lydian to major pentatonic as his cadence in a minor pent key, rather than major pent to minor pent, which is a bit too folky haha.

So if you're in E minor pent, E G A B D, no 2nd or 6th, learn your G_maj_ pent , G A B D E, no 2nd or 7th, (3 chord), and lydian on the 6 chord, C E G F# G A B. 

Creates a cool sound as there is no 6th in E minor pent, but the fact you play the 6th mode of a minor scale, Lydian, gives it this quirky feel. 

Another is lot of Devin T songs, he writes a lot Lydian with a lot of relative major going on due to the tuning, in 5ths, the 5th mode of lydian is the major scale, hurrah!

All in circles.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Sep 2, 2013)

StateOfSerenity said:


> Popular Vai choice is to do the relative major pentatonic and relative lydian over the root minor pent, ala Love Of God.
> 
> The relative lydian is the tension, and the relative major the release, Vai likes to resolve away from the root a lot, so not always going back to that minor pent, instead going from lydian to major pentatonic as his cadence in a minor pent key, rather than major pent to minor pent, which is a bit too folky haha.
> 
> ...



This would work better trying to explain it with some licks to explain what you're saying.





Oh and I have an idea... how about resolving to the major third in a minor lick? It's done in classical music and they have a name for it but I dunno what it is off hand.


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## celticelk (Sep 2, 2013)

Spaced Out Ace said:


> Oh and I have an idea... how about resolving to the major third in a minor lick? It's done in classical music and they have a name for it but I dunno what it is off hand.



A Picardy third? That's a resolution of a minor cadence with the parallel major chord - resolving an E minor progression to Emaj, for example, which is how I first heard it used (at the end of "Three Hits" by the Indigo Girls, actually).


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## celticelk (Sep 2, 2013)

StateOfSerenity said:


> Popular Vai choice is to do the relative major pentatonic and relative lydian over the root minor pent, ala Love Of God.
> 
> The relative lydian is the tension, and the relative major the release, Vai likes to resolve away from the root a lot, so not always going back to that minor pent, instead going from lydian to major pentatonic as his cadence in a minor pent key, rather than major pent to minor pent, which is a bit too folky haha.
> 
> ...



I don't understand what you're getting at here. If the underlying chord progression is the same, you're not going to hear a substantial difference between playing E minor pentatonic and its relative major pentatonic - they're exactly the same notes. You might phrase differently if you're thinking in a major pentatonic mood, but that's nothing to do with the scale.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Sep 2, 2013)

celticelk said:


> A Picardy third? That's a resolution of a minor cadence with the parallel major chord - resolving an E minor progression to Emaj, for example, which is how I first heard it used (at the end of "Three Hits" by the Indigo Girls, actually).



That's the one!


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## Spaced Out Ace (Sep 2, 2013)

celticelk said:


> I don't understand what you're getting at here. If the underlying chord progression is the same, you're not going to hear a substantial difference between playing E minor pentatonic and its relative major pentatonic - they're exactly the same notes. You might phrase differently if you're thinking in a major pentatonic mood, but that's nothing to do with the scale.



I think he means it'd sound different or whatever because you'd resolve it to the G.


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## ROB SILVER (Sep 12, 2013)

For pentatonic basics, I have a pretty extensive introduction on my blog if it's any help.

The Pentatonic Scale- A brief introduction


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## Konfyouzd (Sep 12, 2013)

Pentatonics are sweet and anything that interests you is worth learning. They're colors in a palette and nothing more. Guitarists are always so concerned with what scales they need to learn and what styles said scales belong in. Learn as much as you can and apply it how you please.


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## DarkWolfXV (Sep 17, 2013)

MrPepperoniNipples said:


> well, answer me this
> 
> why would you not learn your pentatonics?
> there are so many things you can do with those 5 notes in just about any genre of music.
> ...



Chromatic is superior. The best scale. You can make literally everything with it.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Sep 17, 2013)

DarkWolfXV said:


> Chromatic is superior. The best scale. You can make literally everything with it.



Ehh. While I just wrote a song where there is a descending chromatic piece at the end of the solo, telling someone that it is the superior scale and all of that isn't the best idea considering they are wondering if they should learn pentatonic scales. That's like telling an amateur rookie boxer to challenge Tyson inhibit prime.


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