Conquering The Major Pentatonic Scale
In this article we take a look at a really useful fingering for the major pentatonic scale. As I mentioned in an earlier article on pentatonic guitar scales, the major pentatonic scale is a vital scale to master. There are probably thousands of rock, blues, jazz and fusion guitar solos that use it…so learn the stuff in this lesson well! 
Here is a fretboard diagram showing the fingering that we will use for this lesson. Please notice that it a fingering for the C Major Pentatonic Scale which contains the notes: C D E G A
C Major Pentatonic Fingering
Please take a few minutes to memorize this fingering. Once you’ve done that, please read on…
All done? Great!
Let’s now take a look at two scale exercises that use this fingering. Both the exercises use melodic patterns and will help you get used to playing the fingering in ways other than straight-up-and-down. This is really important because it helps you sound less “scaley” and more musical. It also makes your scale practice more interesting! Here are the exercises…
C Major Pentatonic Scale: Exercise One
This scale exercise uses alternate picking starting with a downstroke. It uses a four-note melodic pattern and is great for building some foundational pentatonic scale technique…
C Major Pentatonic Scale: Exercise Two
This exercise is a bit more advanced than the previous one. It also uses alternate picking, but it also uses some string-skipping. So start off really slow, and gradually build it up to speed…
Mastering guitar scale exercises like the two above is a really important thing to do if you’re serious about mastering scales. By practicing them your are improving three things at the same time…
- Your overall guitar technique.
- Your guitar scale ability.
- Your ears. You are literally programming in melodic patterns into your mind’s ear.
Pretty cool huh?
Anyway, I hope you had fun with this guitar scales lesson! If you are interested in discovering how to dramatically improve your guitar scale knowledge and ability, then I recommend finding out more about the Guitar Scale Mastery membership website.
