Test Your Skills – Perfecting Your Technique (Part 2)

While teaching the pentatonic scales, it seems as though it leaves my students wondering “what next?”  Well, here’s a few skill builders to show you why and how the pentatonic boxes connect.  We’ll be in the key of C.  To start, let’s take a look at the pentatonic box 3…or the E Phrygian scale.

Below is a simple skill builder starting at the top of the neck.  Most instructors should tell you not to focus on playing scales from bottom to top in formation.  While this one goes from bottom to top and back down again, it’s the way it comes back down that’s unique.  Notice the pattern is in-line while going up the scale, but it’s altered coming down.  This trains your mind to think…”outside ‘the box'”…excuse the pun.

One of the most difficult concepts to teach, as well as understand, is how the pentatonic boxes fit together.  This next skill builder shows how to use a slide at the end to bring you from the E Phrygian scale to the G Mixolydian scale on the way back down.

Let’s take this a step further.  First, we won’t be going up, we’ll be coming down.  Second, we’ll be using the E Phrygian scale, the G Mixolydian scale, and the A Aeolian scale…or the minor pentatonic scale.

If you look at the fretboard diagram, you can see how we added the bottom part of each pentatonic to the previous one.  This is because the bottom of each pentatonic is the top of the one we’re adding.  In the example above, you can see where we transitioned between the scales by using slides.  While this isn’t the perfect demonstration, it does show how you can merge three pentatonic scales together.  Knowing your scale patterns and how they all fit together will help you play up and down the neck of the guitar with little effort.