Module 3: Mastering the minor and major pentatonic scales
3-1 Big picture: Techniques for effective practice▶ Watch the video
Here are some ideas to help you get the most out of your practice time.
Desirable difficulty refers to the idea of challenging yourself in the right ways to enhance your learning, e.g.,:
- You will make the most progress when you work on things that are at the edge of your abilities.
- Interleaving means frequently switching up what you’re working on. With guitar practice, the first few reps of each exercise are where we make the most progress. Changing frequently from one exercise to another will speed your progress in the long run.
- Spaced repetition is a technique for that maximizes memory retention, including muscle memory. The best time to practice something is just before you are about to forget it. When you’re first learning something, you may need to practice it every day, but once you’ve learned it, try waiting a day or two before practicing it again. If it’s still easy to recall and you can still play it well the first time through, you can continue to increase the interval and wait a bit longer before you practice it again. If you ever find that you’ve waited too long and can no longer recall it or play it fluently, shorten the interval and practice it more frequently until it becomes easy again, and then gradually increase the interval. Only if you’re having trouble playing something correctly should you repeat it multiple times. Ultimately, you want to build up the skill of playing each exercise or each piece of repertoire well the first time through.
- It’s hard to maintain perfect focus when practicing. In the Pomodoro Technique, you practice with intense focus for 25 minutes and then take a break with your hands off the guitar for at least five minutes.
Memory consolidation is the process by which your brain transfers information from short-term memory into long-term memory, integrating the information with everything else you already know. The short breaks inherent in the Pomodoro Technique help with this, but sleep is where the magic happens. Consider practicing or doing some visualization exercises just before going to bed to boost your playing overnight.
Memory consolidation is why consistency of practice is more important than quantity. It is much better to practice ten minutes a day, six days a week, than for an hour once a week.
When practicing improvisation, strive to maintain a relaxed focus and refrain from judging your performance while playing. But do record yourself now and then and listen back afterward.
Use the included Practice Log worksheet to plan your practice sessions in advance and track how often you work on each exercise.
3-2 Music theory: Interval basics▶ Watch the video
Intervals are the way that musicians measure distances between notes, and they are helpful because they correspond closely to how notes sound in relationship to scales and chords.
An interval can be reduced to the number of frets between two notes on one string, and we can define scales and chords by the intervals between their notes. The music theory term for a one-fret distance is a semitone (also known as a half-step).
A 12-semitone distance is one octave, and just as there are 12 notes in the chromatic scale, there are 12 distinct intervals that repeat after reaching a distance of 12 semitones. If you ever come across an interval of more than 12 semitones, you can subtract 12 from the number as many times as needed to get a distance in the range from 1 to 12.
Unless otherwise specified, an interval name is measured going up in pitch from a reference note to a target note. The reference note is usually the root of a chord or scale.
Here are the 12 intervals, their shorthand labels, and their official names:
| Semitones | Abbreviation | Interval name |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | R | root / unison |
| 1 | m2 | minor 2nd |
| 2 | M2 | major 2nd |
| 3 | m3 | minor 3rd |
| 4 | M3 | major 3rd |
| 5 | P4 | perfect 4th |
| 6 | #4/♭5 | tritone |
| 7 | P5 | perfect 5th |
| 8 | m6 | minor 6th |
| 9 | M6 | major 6th |
| 10 | m7 | minor 7th |
| 11 | M7 | major 7th |
| 12 | P8 | octave |
We can calculate the interval between two notes by counting in fives as we move between strings: +5 for each string change if we are moving toward the high E string, and -5 if we are moving toward the low E string. If we move between the G and B strings, we need to move diagonally to accommodate the warp. Then we count frets horizontally, adding +1 for each fret moving toward the bridge, and -1 for each fret moving toward the nut.
Once we have an initial distance measurement, we must ensure it’s in the range from 1-12. If the number is negative, keep adding 12 to it until it is positive. If it is greater than 12, keep subtracting 12 from it until it is less than 12. Then, you can use the above table to convert the semitone distance into an interval name.
There is a more detailed video about this available on YouTube if you’d like to see more examples, but this simple version should be sufficient to follow along with this course.
3-3 Memorize the fretboard: D▶ Watch the video
In this module, your goal is to learn the positions of all of the D notes on the fretboard.
Exercise 1: Start from the D notes on the D and G strings and find the other D notes using octave relationships.
Exercises 2-n: Repeat the exercises from Modules 1 and 2 to find D notes across the fretboard.
Be sure to cycle through multiple exercises to keep this challenging from day to day. When all of them start being easy, use spaced repetition to continue practicing less frequently. Don’t forget to keep practicing finding E and A notes occasionally!
3-4 Fretboard knowledge: The major and minor rectangle and stack▶ Watch the video
The pentatonic rectangle consists of two three-fret intervals on two adjacent strings:
As with the stack, we can use the rectangle shape to play either the minor or major pentatonic scale depending on which note we treat as the root.
Memorize this: In the minor pentatonic rectangle, the root is the lower note on the upper string:
Memorize this: In the major pentatonic rectangle, the root is the upper note on the upper string:
The rectangle only contains four of the five notes in the pentatonic scale.
Memorize this: The fifth note in the pentatonic scale can be found two frets above the highest note, or two frets below the lowest note. You can bend the highest note in the rectangle to reach the missing note, and you can bend the upper note on the lower string to reach the same note as the lower note on the upper string. Both of these bends are commonly used:
Memorize this: Rectangles and stacks alternate vertically on the fretboard like this:
Make a note of the horizontal alignment of these shapes. If we alternate rectangles and stacks on a guitar in standard tuning, we can recreate the five traditional pentatonic scale shapes:
The “Form” numbers come from the order in which these patterns appear as you ascend the fretboard.
Memorize this: It is easy to use the rectangle and stack framework to play a major or minor pentatonic scale anywhere on the fretboard that you can find a root note. The shape you will start with depends only on whether you are playing minor or major and which of your fretting fingers is closer to the root:
The notes of the major triad are located inside both the major pentatonic rectangle and stack. Similarly, the notes of the minor triad are located inside the minor pentatonic shapes.
Memorize this: The notes of the minor and major triads are embedded in their corresponding pentatonic rectangles and stacks:
3-5 Fretboard practice: D pentatonic scales▶ Watch the video
You can create hundreds or even thousands of unique exercises from a single core idea by changing the values of a handful of variables. The core exercise idea in this video is to:
- Find a D note somewhere on the fretboard.
- Alternate rectangles and stacks to play up a pentatonic scale as high as you can in one position.
- Play back down to the D note you started on.
- Continue playing down to the lowest note you can play in the same position.
- Play the scale back up to your starting note.
Within this simple framework, I identified 8 variables you can adjust to change the exercise:
- How you choose which D note to start from (3 options):
- Go string by string
- Go from nut to bridge
- Go from bridge to nut
- Whether to start with your index finger or ring finger on the root or alternate (3 options).
- Whether to play the major or minor pentatonic scale or alternate them (3 options).
- How to play up from the root (3 options):
- In scale-wise order
- In groups of three notes
- Skip playing up altogether
- How to play back down to the root (3 options as with #4)
- How to play down from the root (3 options as with #4)
- How to play back up to the root (3 options as with #4)
- Whether to start by playing up or down from the root (2 options)
Taken together, this yields over 4,000 different exercise variations from this simple idea.
Exercises 1-4374: Choose a combination of variables and use the pentatonic rectangle and stack to play D major and minor pentatonic scales across the entire fretboard.
The point of this isn’t to practice all 4374 options, but each one will challenge you in a slightly different way. The point is that you can always create new variations of exercises to challenge yourself by changing a few variables.
3-6 Improvisation: D7 vamp with the rectangle and stack▶ Watch the video
Your goal in this module is to gain a level of comfort with creating phrases using the rectangle and stack to play the major and minor pentatonic scales across the fretboard.
Exercise 1: Choose a five-fret span on the fretboard and improvise over the D7 vamp using either the D major or D minor pentatonic rectangle or stack. This will correspond to playing one of the five traditional pentatonic forms. Practice transitioning from a rectangle to a stack and vice versa. Practice ending your phrases on a chord tone from the major triad (if you target the flat 3rd in the minor pentatonic scale, give it a small bend).
Exercise 2: Once you become comfortable playing in a single position, use the diagonal pathways formed by the stacks to change positions while you play.
Call and Response is the idea of playing two phrases: the call acts like a question, and the response acts like an answer. You can achieve this effect by ending your first phrase on a note that isn’t the root. It’s common for the response phrase to be similar to the call, but it doesn’t have to be. You can also try using the major pentatonic scale for the call and the minor pentatonic scale for the response.
Exercise 3: Practice creating pairs of phrases that act as call and response.