Become a guitar ninja: Minor Pentatonic Positions!

1. About This Course: M Okay. Hey, my name is Jacob Lamb. The minor pentatonic mode might sound scary, but it's actually this really simple shape where people typically start learning how to solo on their guitar. Now, the unfortunate thing is, people learn it, and then they stop, but it can actually be expanded into five different positions, all using the same notes across the neck of the guitar. Which means with this one simple shape, you could be soloing like the pros. In this course, we're going to talk about what the minor Panatonic mode is. How we can use it in songs and all five shapes and how they connect, so that by the end of this course, you should be pretty comfortable soloing in this shape and able to impress your friends. Now, we're going to take this step by step. We're going to make it fun with a lot of exercises, and there's also a PDF included. I'm really looking forward to getting started, so let's jump in together. 2. Basics and Fingering in Position 1: Now, before we get into anything too complicated, I just want to show you the first position of this minor pentatonic mode. It's a lot of fun to play and honestly really simple. So I'll put it on the screen, and we're working from the thickest string to the thinnest string. You'll notice that strings have two notes on them, and of course, we can't play that at the same time. So we're working from the lowest note to the highest note and then moving to the following string, lowest note, highest note, and working up like that. So this is what this shape would sound like. Now, when we talk about this mode, we're going to reference either the first, second, third, or fourth fret, even though we're higher up the neck. And the reason is when we're talking about modes or shapes like this, we're turning these frets into a box, and the box is going to have four frets in it. So that's why we're talking about fret one, two, three, or four in our box. Let's try together playing up and down this mode, and we'll name the fret we're hitting as we play it. So, starting with the first finger on the first fret in this box, we're playing one, four. One, three, one, three, one, three, one, four, one, four. And then let's do it on the way back down as well, but we don't have to name them this time. Now, when we're in first position and only in first position, something really important to know is that our starting fret, our root note is the same name as the mode. For example, we just played that mode from an A, so that would be an A minor pentatonic. If I shifted that whole thing down to the third fret, I'd be starting it from a G. So it's now a G minor pentatonic. Here's the really important part. All five positions that we're learning are part of the same minor pentatonic. So this is position one. When we move up the neck to position two, three, four, five, we're not changing the key we're in because we're playing G minor pentatonic from the second position. So we're not starting on a G anymore, but we're still playing G minor pentatonic. Your root note is the name of the mode only when you're in first position. 3. Get Some Playing Practice!: Okay, we've got our first shape, which is super cool. There's two things we can do with it to practice it. Number one is we can head to YouTube, and we can look up any number of backing tracks by looking up G minor Pentatonic backing track. You'll get all sorts of different genres, but for right now, we're going to put a backing track up and the shape on the screen, and I want you to try playing along with it. You can find notes within the shape and play a little bit of connect the dots or building patterns around it. Or to really practice, you can just work on going up or down the shape until you're comfortable with it and then find some melodies that you like within the shape. 4. What is the Minor Pentatonic?: Now that we've got a cool shape to play, I actually want to talk about what the minor pentatonic is because when we know what it is, we'll better know how to use it. And honestly, it's not difficult. There are two primary modes. Now, with modes, you either have a major mode, which sounds happy or a minor mode which sounds sad, just like chords, you have major and minor. Each of these types of modes uses all seven notes in the musical alphabet. So for example, our minor mode is going to use all seven notes and sound something like this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and the octave. Now, the pen in minor pentatonic means we're only using five notes instead of seven. So we're kind of adjusting our primary minor mode. We're taking away the second and the sixth tone. So now it sounds like this. And you'll notice that's the start of the shape we just learned. So the really important question is, how do we use all five of these shapes in a song? Well, we know that each pattern, each position builds off of the last, so we get this big master shape across the fretboard. What we don't know is that our starting note needs to match the minor key of a song. So if we're playing a song in the key of G minor, we can play minor pentatonic, starting from that G note. Again, if the song is in A minor, the whole pattern shifts up. So we're starting from an A root note. But what about if we're in a major key? I'd say the majority of songs are in a major key. So here's how we'd find the minor pentatonic position to play over a major key. Whatever key we're in, we can play or start that minor pentatonic shape from three frets lower. So, for example, if we're in the key of C, we can find a C on our guitar and move down one, two, three to A. And now we could play a minor pentatonic in the key of C. 5. Transition Notes and Position 2: Let's take a look at the second position. For the whole course, we're gonna stick in the key of G. So if my G minor pentatonic first position is down here, I'm going to shift it up to frets, and I'm going to start with my middle finger. Now, something really, really important is that every new position is going to start from the second note of the previous position. And if that sounds complicated, it actually is meant to make it easier. It means that if we know the previous position, for example, we know we're playing one and four. We know that this is going to be the first note of our next position. Here's what the position sounds like, and I'm going to play our first position first. So you can really hear that they're the same notes in a different order. First position. Second position. Same five notes. We're just starting and ending in a different place, which means that ten times out of ten, they will work well together. So we've just taken a look at the shape, and there's no better way to learn it than to practice it. When we practice it, I want you to do two things. We're still in the key of G minor. We're just playing up here in second position. I want you to practice the mode by itself and the first position mode. You could do that either by playing up and down one and then the other, or you can use something called transition notes. If you take a look at these two modes side by side on the neck, you'll notice that they have similar notes at the low end of one and the high end of the other. These are transition notes. These are the most natural way to shift positions from one position to the other. So maybe you can work up one of them, to say a middle string. Mmm. And then come back down The next one. As an example, I'm going to work up the start of first position, slide into second position. Come down the top half of second position and use a transition note to slide and finish off first position. Immediately, I have more range on the neck of my guitar between those two positions. So that gives me more options to solo with in any key. 6. Practical Application - Position 2 practice!: Let's talk practicing with this second position. Now, something I like to do up here is to actually do some double notes. You may have heard me do it if you watched the intro to this course. So when I'm coming up, I like to stay on these higher strings and find some shapes. Right, so double notes like that? Can be a lot of fun. And you could even use double notes and transition notes to do that both in second and first position. The other way to make this really fun is to actually use your voice as an instrument and mimic it. That's a great way to find some patterns if you're feeling stuck or lost. So maybe I could think of going, uh, do, do, do, do, Batter, do, do, do, do, p, doom, p, butter. Alright. Alright. That sounds kind of cool. A lot of people find it easier to hum than to play when thinking of ideas. So I've got that in my head. Do do, da da, da, do do, do do, batter, batter. See if we can find it. Looks like it starts there in second position. Mm hm. You can even play it up here a little higher. Okay, cool. So between transition notes, double notes and humming melodies to find them, that works really, really well. Here is another backing track with now both patterns on the screen and the transition notes highlighted. Have fun playing along. Mm. 7. Shapes and Sounds on Position 3: We've got position one. Position two. Let's shift up to position three. Now, again, we know that we're starting on the second note of the previous position. So if we think of position one and the second note in it, start from there, position two and the second note there, this is where position three will start from. Something I want us to notice here is that we're expanding our box a little bit. And we need to shift our hand when we get to the second string. I'll show you what I mean here. You see that shift there from the third to the second string. And on the way back down, we're going to have to shift the same way and finish it off. Now, of course, our starting note in second, third, fourth, fifth position is not the root anymore. And it can still be really helpful to know where the roots are. When we're looking at the second position, our root here Mm hm is right there. When we're in the third position, our root is right there, right? These are all Gs. There's another one there. That's useful because if we're playing a song and the band's about to end and you find yourself in third or fourth position, you want to be able to end with the band bringing it back home to G or whatever key you're in. Knowing the roots is really handy, and you can think of them as anchors in your playing. Now, we've got third position right there, and I want to talk about an idea or a concept called expanding solos. A lot of people, when they start a solo, will start kind of in an interesting place. Sometimes they'll come in really hot and there's nowhere to go from there. But the best way to go, in my opinion, is to start nice and low, sort of quiet, and then build it both in volume and up the neck of the guitar. And this grows the solo as it goes, right? It expands it. So in the next lesson, when we're looking at practicing all three positions together, try to think about expanding solos as a part of your playing. Maybe start with the lower strings in position one. You could jump into some of the middle strings for position two. And for position three, maybe you can jump into some of those higher. Shapes. Let's quickly play up and down position three together. We'll do it nice and slow and keep that shape on the screen. And back down. 8. Creativity - Position 3: Here's a new backing track and all three positions on the screen. Now, before we dive into this, there are two things I want you to practice this time. The first one is a target note or a pedal tone. This is a note in your third position that you're going to focus on or keep coming back to while you play other notes around it. So you can pick any one of the notes. There are no wrong answers, and then keep returning to it as you play other bits. This is a great exercise to get comfortable with a shape and start visualizing it differently. The other thing I want you to do this time around is really focus on the notes on two strings and turning that into a fun idea concept or solo. For example, maybe here I want to focus on my middle two strings. I'm going to focus on shifting those notes up. Mm hmm. And trying my best to work with just those four notes. And again, a great way to visualize the mode differently. You may also notice there that I slid a bit, and that's because, especially in the minor pentatonic slides and bends just sound so cool. They can be a lot of fun. So here's a backing track, three modes visualized, and we've got expanding solos, pedal tones or target notes, and then two strings at a time focusing on those four notes. 9. Pattern and Extension with Position 4: It is time to take a look at position four now, so we're really getting high up on the neck. But before we do, I want us to check something out that's really cool. We've been learning these shapes kind of horizontally from the thickest to the thinnest string, and working up by starting each new position from the second note of the previous position, right? Something really cool is that we can also play G minor pentatonic vertically up the neck by playing each of these positions. For example, here's what this sounds like playing horizontally. And then playing vertically, starting from position one, two, three, four, five, and then back to the octave of the same position. So each of these positions we're learning is starting from the first note, the second note, third note, the fourth note, and the fifth note of this kind of main parent shape. Now, this main parent shape is synonymous with position one. It's kind of the root, home base of everything. So when we're talking about learning position four, we're actually talking about playing the same five notes, starting from the fourth note and ending on the fourth note. So we're in position four or the fourth note of our minor pentatonic. Let's again take position three. Start from the second note, and then here's what this sounds like starting from the fourth tone. And coming back down. Okay. Bear with me a little bit for just a touch more theory. Here's why that previous fact was really cool. If we know that the fourth position starts from the fourth tone, that helps us to find the roots really, really easily. Check this out. Fourth tone. Fifth tone. Then we're back to the root. All we're doing is counting. If it's the root, then we're counting one, two, three, four, five, and we've got another root. We can check this by going back to the first note of our first position. Yep. Same note in a different octave. Okay? So root, two, three, four, five, root two, three, four, five, root. Do the same thing in the second position. Two, three, four, five, root, two, three, four, five, root. So that is a really easy way to think about how to find the root in every position. Now, let's play this fourth position up and down really slowly together. And coming back down. Handy trick here, if you're ever forgetting strings, there are just two notes on every string for every position. For some modes out there that are outside of what we're learning in this lesson, there's one note per string or three or if we're really getting crazy with the shape, four notes per string, this is really easy to remember it's just two notes per string all up and down the board. 10. Expressive Techniques - Position 4 practice!: Alright, we're into our fourth backing track. And if you've come this far, you know almost the whole neck, right? First, second, third, fourth position. And then we've got the octave of the first position up here, right? Third fret, jumping up to the third fret after the double dots or the 15th fret. So we could, if we wanted to make the leap from fourth position all the way up to first position again and call it done. Of course, if you've come this far, it would be silly to not know all five positions, but this is a great place to be. Now, for this backing track, I am only going to put up to visualize the fourth and third position, and there's a reason for that. I want us to go back and look at really focus on the transition notes. If there's one takeaway besides the five primary positions, it would be how key, how cool, how important transition notes are those unlock the whole thing from being jittery and kind of jumping from one position to the next. To being able to just flow down on those middle, high or lower strings. So we're going to look at position four, position three. Really focus on the transition notes. And one more thing. When you're playing and you're focusing on the fourth position, I want you to practice this way because for me, this has helped me learn and memorize modes like crazy. We're going to go up two notes back one, up two B one, up to back one, something like this. Oh. Right, we're going from our first note up two B down one. From there, up two back down, one. Up, two, Bdwn one. If we can work up all the positions like that, it just helps with memorization like crazy. If we do it on the way back down, it also makes for a cool solo run. Again, you might have heard that in the intro to this course. We come down to an up one. So here's the fourth backing track, and we're going to practice transition notes and those back to up one runs. 11. A whole new note: Let's shift modes for a moment, full pun intended and look at something that turns this idea of five positions into a whole different ballgame. There are variants to this minor pentatonic that when we change one position, we can remember that it changes all positions. And here's what I mean. There's a way to turn the minor pentatonic into a very bluesy sounding mode just by adding a note. Check this out. Here's our minor pentatonic from the first position. Mmm. Now, I can add a little chromatic if just by adding in one note in the lower octave, that same note in the higher octave. Okay, so it's here and here. Same note. Now, when I run up and down, it sounds pretty darn bluesy. Especially when we solo that way. Now, why is this important? This is important because every position adopts the change we just made down here. We can think about the second position, starting from the second note, right? So we add one, two, three, Nunn and four, right? That would work up here, two, three, new note four. So from every position, we've just transformed the minor pentatonic into a whole different scale. The key here is pun intended again, the changes that we make follow suit in all the positions. And that means that learning these positions is really a powerful tool for soloing. We've got the fifth position, and we're done. 12. Full Range Exploration - Position 5: Position five. We are now super high up the fret board. So let's learn this shape and then here how each position sounds together. We are all the way up here. So starting from the second note of position four. We've got one, two, three, four. We're now starting from the 13th fret. So here's our shape. Alright, let's play it together up and down really slowly. One, two, three, four. And then coming back down, Remember, this is position five. So our second note is the root, and we're back to First position up there. So let's take a look at how each of these sound working up position one, two, three, four and five. You'll hear, again, same five notes starting and ending from a different place. Oh. Oh 13. Practicing position 5: Let's take a look at the fifth and final backing track. For this one, I want to mention that the chords are one, three, four, five, back to one. Do it all over again. The reason I want to mention that is I want to talk about soloing through chord changes. For example, our first, second, third, fourth, fifth position, are lining up with cords in the key. Now, of course, you can play any position over all of these cords and it will sound good because it's all in the same key. But it can be really cool to line up your position with the cord, right? So all of a sudden, we're kind of moving around the neck along with the cords. Everything's lining up, everything's flowing and grooving for lack of a better term. Now, you can decide if you want to try doing that by quickly shifting positions with chord changes, or if you want to use transition notes quickly to get where you need to go. I'd call that the more advanced or professional way of doing things, but there's certainly nothing wrong with jumping somewhere quick, especially sounds nice if you bring it into a bend right away. So one, three, four, five are the chords here. They're on the screen along with all five positions. Remember to practice position five by itself, and all five positions now using transition notes. 14. Final Project and Congratulations!: Whoo. You did it. You did it. Congrats on getting this far and finishing the course. By now, you should have a pretty good understanding at least of how positions work. Even if you haven't memorized all five shapes yet, that's okay. Use the PDF. Use the backing tracks and keep practicing. Just comes with time. I'll be second nature soon enough. Now, for a final project, I want you to download one of these backing tracks. All five backing tracks are available as links in the PDF, so you should be able to click, open it, and download it from there. If you're having trouble with that, you can always play it in the background and play over that. But we want to see or hear you play one or some of these positions over your favorite backing track. You can share this as a video file or a YouTube link, or if you're a little recording shy or don't have a way to record, then you can also just share maybe your favorite position, your favorite backing track, and how it went. If you have any questions at all, you can always email me at Jacob at jacobam.com. Or you can find more courses or even do private lessons with me at jacoblam.com. I'm really looking forward to seeing you in the next course and happy playing.