Guitar Lessons Beginners – Introduction to the Pentatonic Scales

Pentatonic scales are the most commonly used in music and learning them is the introduction to scales and modes for the guitar player. Rock, Blues and heavy metal are based on minor pentatonic scales and county, county rock and R&B tunes are based on major pentatonic scales. A pentatonic scale contains five notes derived from a minor or major scale. Pentatonic scales are popular because they are easy to learn and play and sound good.

If anyone wants to play guitar, he has to learn pentatonic scale (i.e) minor and major scales over the entire fret board in any key. Some pentatonic scales will make learning, studying, practicing and remembering them easy.

Ethnomusicology generally classifies pentatonic scales as hemitonic or anhemitonic. The former ones contain one or more semitones and the latter do not contain semitones. Pentatonic scales are used for rock guitar and also in jazz, blues, county and bluegrass music. Hence, it is an important part of learning to play. As the pentatonic scales are simple they are used to teach music to children.

The easy way to determine whether the major or minor pentatonic is to be used for professions which are based on power chords is by ear.

You should practice both the major and minor pentatonics in every key over the entire fingerboard and concentrate on the difference between the two scales. Once you become conversant with the difference in sound, it will be easy for you to match your playing to the flavor of the chord progression.