A minor Pentatonic Scale and Blues Lick

A minor Pentatonic Scale
In this lesson Charlie will show you a Pentatonic Scale. It is called the A minor or 6th Pentatonic Scale. You can then play some cool Blues licks with it. The diagram below shows the position of the fingers on the strings to play the notes of this scale.

Play Video


Difficulty Rating

Try the Tab

In case you missed it ...

Hi there, what we're going to do today is have a look at an A minor Pentatonic Scale (aka the 6th Pentatonic). We are going to play the scale ascending and descending, and we're also going to pull a bit of a blues lick out of that scale.

Ok, let's start off, sixth string fifth fret with our first finger, and we're going to simply play one, four (so that's going to be from the fifth fret to the eighth fret).

Down to the A string, we're going to go one, three, that's five to seven (fret).
five to seven (fret)
five to seven (fret)
five to eight (fret) and
five to eight (fret).

If we take that through we get one, four,
one, three,
one, three,
one, three,
one, four,
one, four (the fingers that I'm using).

Ascending / Descending

Take a little bit of a look what I'm doing here with my right hand, my picking hand. I'm going to use what we call alternate picking. So, the first note is on a down stroke, next note is on an up stroke, down stroke, up stroke, down stroke, up stroke, and so on...

Ok, now that we've kind of got used to that scale shape, what we're going to do is use some of the notes of that scale shape and put them into a rock lick or blues lick. So let's get right onto that.

We start off with our third finger bending up the G string a half tone... Second thing we do is we get our first finger here and we put it down on the B string fifth fret... Roll that first finger down onto the first string, so that we now get ... (there is a lick right there)

Next thing we do is to add our fourth finger on the eighth fret of the B string... and finally finishing up with our first finger again on the B string fifth fret... Play that a few times nice and quick and there is our lick.

The important thing to remember here guys is that when you play scale shapes and licks you have to be extremely thorough. Make sure that you play them over and over again. If they are not comfortable for you at a certain tempo, just keep playing 'em and playing 'em. They'll get stronger and faster. Then when you're going to use them in the middle of a solo you'll feel confident enough to play through them. Don't do half measures. You gotta practice these things quite continuously, but anyway, I'm sure you'll have a lot of good fun doing it, and we'll talk soon.