25 Major Pentatonic Scale Licks For Blues Guitar Pdf

[Hadda Condino]

Thebest thing about the major pentatonic scale is that it uses exactly the same shapes as the minor pentatonic scale, but the shapes are simply shifted down 3 frets. For example, compare the following:

While the Major and Minor pentatonic scales may look the same on paper, they are very different sounding scales. In fact the Major pentatonic has more in common with the Mixolydian mode than the Minor pentatonic. If we compare and contrast these two scales, you will see the similarities clearly:

The significance of the root note is that it determines where you will move the scale to place it in the key in which you want to play. If you are playing in the key of A, you want to move the scale pattern to where the root notes are on A notes, like this:

This would make it the A major pentatonic scale. For another example, if you were playing in the key of D, you would move the pattern further up the neck so that the root notes are on D notes, making it the D major pentatonic scale:

You can use the major blues scale when soloing over any part of a blues progression. So, if you are playing a blues progression in the key of E, you could use the E major blues scale. If you are playing over a blues progression in G, you could use the G major blues scale, and so on.

That means that you have two scale choices for any key in which you are playing. What I mean by that is if you are playing over a blues progression in E, you could use the E minor blues scale or the E major blues scale. If you are playing over a blues progression in G, you could use the G major blues scale or the G minor blues scale.

You could also change back and forth between major and minor blues scales as you are soloing. So, you could do a few licks using the major blues scale, then switch and do a few licks using the minor blues scale, and so on.

You just have to be careful with the IV chord. Lots of the notes in the major blues scale will sound fine over it, but there are a couple that will clash with the chord in an unappealing way. I personally prefer to use the minor blues scale over IV.

Excellent info!! I just learned the minor pentatonic and now moving into the major pentatonic scale. Can you still do big bends in lots of vibrato in the major pentatonic ? I know I have heard people say you can not use the same licks as the minor pentatonic .

To answer your question, you can definitely still do big bends when you are using the major pentatonic. The difference is that the notes you are likely to bend, and how you resolve your phrases will be different to when you are using the minor pentatonic scale.

Mixing the major with the minor has really helped my playing . I know lots of people mix major and minor ..but to me it sounds very BB King . That is who I think of when I play mixing the major and minor.

In other words, the second shape of the major pentatonic scale overlaps with the first shape of the minor pentatonic scale. The third shape of the major pentatonic scale overlaps with the second shape of the minor pentatonic scale. The fourth shape of the major pentatonic scale overlaps with the third shape of the minor pentatonic scale. And so on.

Most lessons (this one included) focus on the first position of the minor pentatonic scale, as this is typically the most familiar for players. As a result this makes it easier for guitarists to start mixing the two scales in this part of the fretboard. If however you are getting started on mixing the two scales and you would like to advance beyond the first shape, then inside The Blues Club I have recently uploaded a full video course introducing the major pentatonic scale and how it overlaps with the minor pentatonic scale. This week I will be adding another course that covers 5 pentatonic box shapes where you can mix the two scales. So if you are looking to get to grips with mixing the two scales, I think both of these courses will really help.

Either way, good luck my man! And if you have any more questions or if I can help at all, please do get in touch. You can reach me on ai...@happybluesman.com and I am always around and happy to help! ?

The pentatonic scale really needs no introduction. It truly is a safety net for any budding guitarist, and usually is the first scale you learn when starting out soloing on the guitar. It is commonly used in rock, jazz, blues and metal. This 5-note scale works in almost any context!

The pentatonic scale is made up of the following degrees: 1 b3 4 5 b7. Most guitarists are usually familiar with the first position:

In this example, we are trying to create a rhythmic shift by adding silence in between the first two groups of four notes in the bar.

You can make your playing more original by using that rhythmic shift trick.

Guitar player Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme) uses those rhythmic motifs as lot as part of his solos.

The fast alternate picking technique is a trademark of guitarist John Petrucci (Dream Theater).In order to make this lick sound as good as it can, I recommend you use distortion and palm muting for the alternate picking parts.

This concept will allow you to make your interpretation of the pattern more interesting by breaking away from the linear aspect of a lick played only in alternate picking or legato.

Feel free to experiment with it on other licks!

This lick will take you through a large portion of the neck in very little time. It could almost be used as an exercise to work on left-hand moves and alternate picking.

The concept is fairly simple: play the five positions of the scale horizontally, focusing only on the D and G strings.

To make the lick less linear, I advise you to alternate between regular notes and palm-muted ones.

Caution: this is a flashy lick! You may not know this yet, but the guitar allows you to easily play the pentatonic scale on three octaves.

In this example, you will play the same three notes from the pentatonic scale on three octaves on your guitar.

This lick really works to start off or finish a solo. It takes you very quickly from a low note to a very high note, hence its flashy effect.

Tapping is a technique I seldom use, but it can be a very interesting one in order to create wide intervals between the notes you play.

This example uses tapping with string skipping, and only the most technically proficient guitarists will be able to play it!

This little technical challenge should keep you busy during your long winter nights!

Try combining both the minor and major third with the 1 and the 5, bending up to the major third, hammering on to it, slides, or any technique you know. The idea here is to zero in on that ambiguity and own it, or at least make it sound bluesy.

What you can see here is a 1st Inversion (major/minor) triad with the same options as before. The great thing here is that the positioning of the notes will force you to come up with different licks than you did with the other pattern.

The framework that we will cover here will not only make it easier to get to grips with the major pentatonic scale; you will also be able to apply the same idea in the future when working through other new scales, like the modes.

In brief though, most new scales that you learn are likely to share some notes with scales already in your repertoire. So by thinking that you are playing a totally new scale, you are actually ignoring some of the useful overlap that exists between scales.

These problems apply whenever guitarists are trying to apply new scales in their playing. Sadly, it often leads them to give up on the new material that they are working through and revert to their go-to phrases and licks.

Guitarists struggle with the major pentatonic scale for the reasons outlined above. They try to move away totally from the minor pentatonic and target the new and upbeat blues sound the major pentatonic offers. This is problematic for the reasons outlined above.

Firstly, the major pentatonic scale is almost always mixed with the minor pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic lacks some of the edge and tension required for the blues. By itself, it sounds too happy and upbeat.

As a result, guitarists typically mix the scale alongside the minor pentatonic or blues scales. In this way they can retain edge and bite in their lead playing, whilst adding some of the warmth of the major scale.

In my experience, the best way to start targeting the major pentatonic scale is by taking a minor pentatonic lead approach. So instead of trying to heavily target the major pentatonic scale, you do the opposite and start by playing almost nothing but the minor pentatonic scale.

3.) Even with this focused approach, trying to target all of these notes across this section of the fretboard is likely to be overwhelming. As such, I recommend trying to add in notes from the major pentatonic scale one at a time.

This I feel is a byproduct of targeting additional notes from a new scale. It alters the flow of the lick and leads you to create slightly different ideas. Hopefully though, you can hear how just a single note from the major pentatonic alters the feel and character of the phrase.

As with so many elements of blues guitar, you can get a huge amount of mileage from this concept. In the single area of the fretboard on which we have been focusing, there are 3 new notes from the major pentatonic scale which appear in 7 different positions.

You can target each of these notes in different ways, and use a variety of techniques (like slides, bends and hammer ons) to add these notes into your licks. In doing so, you will quickly find yourself using the major pentatonic scale with confidence ?

Once you feel comfortable targeting individual notes, you can start to increase the number of notes from the major pentatonic which appear in each phrase. In this way, you exponentially increase the number of potential combinations and can create a wide variety of interesting ideas in just a single area of the fretboard.

3a8082e126