Pentatonic Scales - Gaining Technical Mastery By Experimenting With Different Techniques

This guitar lesson will really help build your pentatonic scales technique! And why is that important? Well…here are a couple of reasons off the top of my head…

• Pentatonic guitar scales are some of the most common guitar scales used to play guitar solos. So by building your pentatonic scales technique, you’ll also be improving your ability to improvise and play guitar solos.
• The more technique you have the better. I know some people might disagree with this statement, but I’ve never found ANY downsides to developing more guitar technique. In fact, the more I develop, the more “at home” I feel with the instrument. And that’s always a good thing!

So how will we build your pentatonic scales technique?

What we’ll do is take a cool sounding minor pentatonic scale exercise and experiment playing it using three different techniques…

• Alternate Picking
• Sweep Picking
• Legato

Before we take a look at the exercise, here is the pentatonic scale fingering the exercise uses. It shows a really common way of playing the A Minor Pentatonic scale. (Every guitarist should know this one. So if you don’t know it, please take some time to memorize it now)…

A Minor Pentatonic Fingering:

OK…let’s take a look at the three variations of the exercise now…

A Minor Pentatonic Exercise: Played With Alternate Picking

Alternate picking is when you use alternating downstrokes and upstrokes. With alternate picking you never have two of the same pick motion in a row. It is always down, up, down, up etc. So when you play the exercise above, be sure to watch your picking hand carefully.

IMPORTANT: Take a close look at the fingering shown underneath the TAB. It’s a little bit weird. It feels comfortable to me, but feel free to change it to

A Minor Pentatonic Exercise: Played With Sweep Picking

Sweep picking means that you use consecutive downstrokes or upstrokes while crossing strings. This means that your picking hand uses far fewer movements than alternate picking. It also tends to make the exercise sounds a bit smoother than when it played using alternate picking.

You’ll notice in the exercise above how I use two or three upstrokes in a row. Be sure to make the consecutive upstrokes ONE smooth flowing motion.

A Minor Pentatonic Exercise: Played With Legato

I tend to think of legato playing as anytime I use…

• Hammer-ons
• Pull-offs
• Slides
• Tapping

Notice how in the above exercise I use only pull-offs. As you play the exercise pay careful attention to the picking. Playing some of the notes with pull-offs can make the picking seem a bit strange. But there is a real logic to it. See if you can figure it out. (Hint: Compare the alternate picking version with the legato version).

There we have it. A VERY powerful way of developing your pentatonic scales technique. I hope you have fun with them.

I should mention here that if you are serious about gaining a mastery over guitar scales, then be sure to take a look at the Guitar Scale Mastery membership website. It’s definitely not for lazy bums, but if you are willing to practice hard I feel that it could help your guitar playing a lot. (At the moment, I’m giving away a 246 page bonus e-book called “Pentatonic Guitar Success” to all guitarists who become a member).