Blues Guitar Lesson: The Minor Pentatonic scale

Do you want to learn how to play like Eric Clapton, SRV, and Johnny Winter?  In this blues guitar lesson I will show you how to play the Minor Pentatonic Scale, the key ingredient used by these blues guitar legends.

So what is the pentatonic scale?

Simply put, the minor pentatonic scale is made up of 5 notes.

These 5 notes are derived directly from the major scale.  Scale degrees contained in the minor pentatonic scale are as follows.

1 b3 4 5 b7

These 5 notes sound great when you play them over any standard blues rock chord progression.  One of the best aspects of using this scale, is that every note usually sounds good when you use it.  When playing blues guitar it is usually good to also understand where the notes of the I IV V chord progression are in the scale.

For instance, if you play a blues in A, then the I IV V notes are A, D, and E.  Now you will want to find where these notes are at in the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic scale.  This will make your playing sound more melodic and it will also help your solos to flow more.

Anyone wanting to understand anything about the blues, must first start by learning the minor pentatonic scale.  It is simple the most used scale and by learning it, you will be able to understand where all those great blues guitar solos come from.

Here is the 1st pattern of the A minor pentatonic scale.

Here is a lick taken directly from that scale.  This lick has been used be countless blues guitarists including SRV, and Eric Clapton.