Should a guitar player learn all the pentatonic scales?
so far I have learned all the patterns of the e minor pentatonic scale. what am I supposed to do next? learn the minor pentatonic in other keys? what should I do next?
By the way, I’m already soloing a bit and it’s a lot of fun
but I still want to learn more and more and more and become really good.
Learn the scale in every key. Unless you never play vocal songs you can’t do everything in one key. Also learn the major pentatonic scales, too, You already know G major the notes ar the same as E minor, you just have a G for the root. Major pentatonic is the most common in pop music.
The more you know the better you’ll play. Learn to skip up or down instead of just repeating all the notes in order and remember passing notes, the ones in a seven note scale instead of a five note pentatonic scale. Sprinkle a few in for color, particularly for the upbeat notes, The down beats are most important so tho notes in the five note scale work best there.
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The patterns of any scale, on guitar, are the same for any key, you only have to start on a different fret. The only thing that changes is when you can or cannot use open strings, but the general idea is that if you can play a scale in 1 key on guitar, you can play them in all keys.
In fact, I think it’s important to practice a scale in all keys as soon as you learn it. If you only practice it in E and suddenly have to play it in another key, you’ll have the tendency to play everything in E again.
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Learn the scale in every key. Unless you never play vocal songs you can’t do everything in one key. Also learn the major pentatonic scales, too, You already know G major the notes ar the same as E minor, you just have a G for the root. Major pentatonic is the most common in pop music.
The more you know the better you’ll play. Learn to skip up or down instead of just repeating all the notes in order and remember passing notes, the ones in a seven note scale instead of a five note pentatonic scale. Sprinkle a few in for color, particularly for the upbeat notes, The down beats are most important so tho notes in the five note scale work best there.
References :
Once you have the scale pattern in your head;
playing it in other keys is not as complex as it seems at first.
You can simply move the tonic and be in another key.
Get some good backing track music to jam to.
Try Youtube and check out RandomJammer.
I also recommend Coffee Break Grooves.
Learn the major scale, minor scale. harmonic minor scale, melodic minor, blues scale.
Practice with a metronome at first and jam, jam, jam!
References :
Once you are familiar with a pattern with any one key, all other keys are fallen into the same pattern. I believe you mean you have learnt all 5 boxes. What next is to link boxes 1 and 2, then 2 and 3, then 1 & 2 & 3 etc.
To begin with, the key to do this is to sketch out boxes 1& 2 together on a guitar neck. You can use red dots for box 1 and blue dots for box 2. There is no one formula to link the boxes but there is always an easy way for yourself.
The next important key is, when you link the boxes together, there is a ‘pivotal point. This point is the position where you’d use a common finger. When you switch between boxes, this point is your reference point. If you mess it up, your scale would be all over the places.
References :
it certainly helps to learn them. Jimi Page is one of the greatest guitarists of all time and all he does is go between different pentatonic scales. You don’t have to flat out memorize them, but have just enough of an understanding of them to automatically think in your head "if i play this bit here, what’s gonna sound the best after i play it" and once you have that down you really wont have to think about it too much. In combination with that, you can take all kinds of solos from songs that you know and kind of blend them together to make your own, a technique used a lot by Slash, again its just a matter of making the solo your own by taking the tricks you know and putting them to good use. Have fun with it and play the solo a bunch of times to see what sounds best and honestly if it sounds horrible then you can always go back and find what about it makes it that way and fix it, but making mistakes can be the best way to formulate a riff, so again just go with what you come up with and improve on it and you’ll eventually have a solid song. Whatever you do, use more cowbell, in a metaphorical sense of course because too much cowbell sounds like shit.
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