Blues Guitar Lesson Video Minor Pentatonic Scale

Learn how to play the Minor Pentatonic scale in this Free blues guitar video.

This is an old podcast and any promotions talked about are no longer valid. The podcast talks about using the minor pentatonic scale.

You can a FREE PDF of all 5 minor pentatonic patterns when you sign up for the guitar lessons newsletter here.

To learn more about using the minor pentatonic scale, please check out Blues Guitar DVD 1. This is a 1 hour and 42 minute DVD or Download which shows you how to effectively use the scale to create some serious blues guitar leads.

Below is a transcript of this video.

There's 5 patterns that you can play that use the minor pentatonic scale. And if you're interested in getting all those 5 patterns, you just sign up for the newsletter, and on the second email you're going to receive, you're going to have a link to a PDF where you can download all 5 patterns.

I currently just put out 15 different blues guitar backing tracks to practice with, in various different keys and styles. There's a slow blues, you got shuffle blues, funky blues, New Orleans type blues, and it just helps your playing out tremendously if you practice along to these tracks. You just gain a lot in your rhythmic and improvisational skills will develop just a ton. If you're not practicing with a band regularly, these backing tracks are the next best thing to use.

So if you're interested in the free backing tracks, sign up for the newsletter in the next two weeks. Like I said, yeah, for two weeks you're going to get a free backing track, if you sign up to the newsletter. That's starting today, on Wednesday, I believe today is, July the 16th. So that will give you a couple of weeks to check that out. And this one-- the free one's actually "Shuffle in G", and it's a good thing to practice. So let's go ahead and get on with the podcast.

Hey this is John with Learning Guitar Now. In this video podcast, I'm going to show a little bit about playing blues guitar using pentatonic scale. So the pentatonic scale is a really cool scale to use and you should already know the first position of the pentatonic scale. And if you haven't learned, there's five cool patterns that you can learn on the, by using the pentatonic scale. And if you don't have any of those patterns, you can sign up for the newsletter, and the second newsletter you receive you'll get a link to download a PDF of the 5 must know pentatonic scale patterns for playing blues guitar. Anyway, let's get on with pattern one, looks like this, you can check it out: 5 fifth fret, 8, 5 7. This is in the key of A. And the key of A is fifth fret, and why we're playing in the key of A is because we're starting this scale on the fifth fret, pattern one, on A note, on the E stream. A fifth fret Five seven, five seven, five seven, five eight, five eight.

Go back down. So that's the pentatonic scale and that scale is used a ton in Blues guitar licks. And you know just a basic lick and we're going to run through just say, you know, you might not already know this. We're just going to break it down, you know, something like this.

A pretty simple lick. You take seventh fret, bend it, and make sure when you bend, you keep that thumb on the top so you can bend into your thumb to get more power. So that's a cool lick. Then you can just add a couple of licks together and you can get some really cool ones. So that's lick one you can try.

Add a Chuck Berry type lick. That's just bending seven. Fifth fret bar, first finger, repeat. So that's lick number 2.

Then you can take lick number 3 and add it to it. You have fifth fret, and 5, 8, 5, straight down the scale. And that's straight from lick number one. So you could try it slow. So I just kind of improvised it a little bit, threw in some different licks in there, but you know. Bend, eight fret-- that thir lick.

So from that you got-- then that end I'm just cutting off the note on the fifth fret with my first finger. And you'll hear tons of guitar players doing that.

There's also one lick you can add to that by rolling down. You're going-- just after you hit the lick. So it happens fast, also you do up stroke with the pick. That's all from this scale.

So when you practice that scale, you would definitely want to go down up with the pick, down up, down up, down up, down up. So when you do that, straight like maybe eighth notes, sixteenth notes. Eighth notes, one and two and three and four and, you get the idea. You can also swing the eight note, which you'll hear in blues a lot. Swing the eighth note sounds like this. Very useful to play in a shuffle, shuffle blues sounds like this-- eight seven, straight up and down the scale.

Now you can get that swing eighth notes type feel. And then do the cut off. And when you play those licks, and you hit the string, you got to hit the thing hard, you know.

And so you're going to do that bend, it's going to hurt your hand. So I mean, you've got to build those calluses up, because you've got to learn how to bend, and you've got to learn how to vibrato hard and just hit with an extreme attack and then blend that with a light attack in your fingers maybe also. All these licks are straight from the pentatonic scale , which is a awesome scale.

You just got to know in up and down. And then the way you phrase things, you've got to make it sound like you're saying something. So if you were talking to somebody, you got to phrase it like you want them to understand what you're saying. You can say, just a simple phrase, then response, phrase again, response, phrase again, and then a response.

And you keep building and building until you have longer responses and longer phrases. Then respond to it. Then slow it back down again. You can almost simulate having a conversation with yourself on guitar using phrases, responses and just kind of talking back and forth with your licks instead of just, you know, you can't just go up, sitting there playing licks over and over again amounts to a lot of mush.

So you got to actually say something with this scale to actually make it sound good. And that is the point of this whole podcast is to learn pattern number one, where you don't even have to think about playing that thing. You should be able to pay that thing in you sleep. And if you can't, you need to practice that a lot until you can play it without even thinking about it.

And then, you want to try to phrase, practicing your bendings-- just the way you bend it will make it will make it a different phrase, the way you use your finger, or maybe use your thumb, or use your second finger.

But that's the whole point is just to experiment with the first pentatonic pattern and there's tons of other patterns to learn and other ways to use the pentatonic scale. But if you have any questions or comments, you can email me at info@learningguitarnow.com.

You can check out the site. I have some slide guitar lessons available, DVDs, downloadable lessons.

And if you have anything you'd like to see on a podcasts, or YouTube video, or DVD or lesson, please email me and I'll try to get it into the schedule here. So that is it for this podcast.

Okay, that is it for our video podcast number 5, talking about the minor pentatonic scale. And once again, thanks for checking out the podcasts. And once again, if you do sign up for the newsletter, you get the free backing track. And all the tracks I created, there's 15 of them, if you're interested in getting the backing tracks, you can get $9.99 will get you 15 backing tracks.

They're about 3 to 4 minutes long each, in various keys and different styles. And go to learningguitarnow.com to check out all of the backing tracks. And none of those tracks are included with any of the DVDs. So you're not repeating things you're already receiving.

And there's also slide guitar DVDs, downloadable lessons some Allman Brothers lessons. You can check out the free lessons on the blog or subscribe to the YouTube channel to get some more free video lessons. There's a lot to check out on learningguitarnow.com.

So please check out the site. I want to thank everybody for subscribing to the podcast on iTunes. I got a bunch of subscribers lately. Actually, I almost blew out the site, but I got a lot more bandwidth so I can handle that now. So that shouldn't be a problem. Once again, sign up for the newsletter and get a free backing track. And that's it for this podcast.

Thanks for visiting the site! If you have a question about any of our Blues Guitar or Slide Guitar DVDs, feel free to contact me. I hope you have found what you are looking for on the site.