The Pentatonic Scale on Guitar: Five Positions, One Scale

The pentatonic scale is a five-note scale, and the minor pentatonic is the one most guitarists learn first: root, flat third, fourth, fifth and flat seventh. In A that's A, C, D, E and G. On the guitar it falls into five positions that link up the neck, starting with the familiar box at the 5th fret.

What the pentatonic scale is

“Pentatonic” just means five notes. Most Western scales have seven; the pentatonic leaves two out. The minor pentatonic takes the natural minor scale and drops its second and sixth, which are the two notes most likely to clash with the chords underneath. What's left is a scale with no semitone steps at all, which is why it's so hard to play a genuinely wrong note in it.

Its formula is written in intervals from the root: 1, ♭3, 4, 5,♭7. That formula is the scale. Put it on A and you get A, C, D, E, G. Put it on E and you get E, G, A, B, D. The notes change with the key; the distances between them don't, and that's what makes the shapes movable.

On the guitar, those five notes repeat across six strings and roughly twenty frets. Rather than learning that as one enormous pattern, guitarists split it into five overlapping shapes called positions (or boxes). Each one covers about four frets and has two notes on every string, and together they cover the whole neck.

Why guitarists learn it first

The minor pentatonic is the backbone of rock and blues soloing, and a large part of pop, funk and country lead playing. There are good reasons it comes first:

• It sits under the hand. Two notes per string, mostly within four frets, played with the first and third or fourth fingers.
• It's forgiving. With no semitone steps, almost every note works over the chords of the key. That lets you concentrate on phrasing, timing and bends.
• It's a foundation. Add two notes and you have the natural minor scale; treat a different note as home and you have the major pentatonic. Learning it properly is learning half of several other scales.

The catch is that most players learn one position as a shape and never find out what's in it. That's the habit this guide is designed to break.

The intervals inside the scale

Before learning more shapes, learn what the first one contains. Here is position 1 in A minor with each note labelled by its interval from the root rather than its name.

Each interval has a job:

• Root (A) — home. Phrases that end here sound finished.
• Flat third (C) — three frets above the root. It's the note that makes the scale sound minor.
• Fourth (D) — five frets above the root. A tension note that wants to move, usually down to the third or up to the fifth.
• Fifth (E) — seven frets above the root. Stable and strong; it's in the A minor chord.
• Flat seventh (G) — ten frets above the root, or two frets below the next one. It pulls back up to the root and gives the scale its bluesy edge.

Three of those five notes — root, flat third and fifth — are the A minor chord itself. That's the most useful single fact about the scale: every position has the chord built into it, and those chord tones are where phrases sound most resolved. If interval names are new to you, our guide to guitar intervals as fret distances covers them from the start.

The five positions in A minor

Here are all five positions in A minor, from the 5th fret up. The numbering starts from the box most people already know, and each position begins where the previous one ends: the higher note on each string in one position is the lower note on that string in the next.

Past position 5, the pattern repeats: position 1 again, an octave higher at the 17th fret. The same works downwards, so position 5 also exists an octave lower, between the 2nd and 5th frets, where it meets the open strings. That low version is worth knowing, because it lets you use the open A and low E strings in riffs.

Don't try to learn all five at once. Position 1 should be automatic before position 2 gets serious attention, and each new position should be learned as an extension of the one you already know, not as a separate shape.

Connecting the positions

Because neighbouring positions share a note on every string, moving between them is a matter of using those shared notes as hinges. Here are positions 1 and 2 together. The solid notes are position 1; the outlined notes are the extra ones that position 2 adds above it.

Three ways to practise the join:

• Slide on the shared note. Play up position 1 and, on any string, slide from the shared note into position 2's upper note. On the G string that's D at the 7th fret sliding up to E at the 9th.
• Play one string at a time. On a single string, play every scale note from the 5th fret to the 17th. You're walking through all five positions in a straight line.
• Use three-note-per-string runs. Take one extra note from the next position on each string. The runs feel longer and naturally carry you up the neck.

Linking positions is the subject of its own guide, too. Once these shapes are familiar, how to break out of the pentatonic box works through connecting them across the whole neck.

A minor pentatonic across the whole neck

Put all five positions together and this is what you get: every A, C, D, E and G from the nut to the 17th fret. The open strings at the left are part of it too — E, A, D and G are all in the scale, and the open B isn't.

Seen this way, the positions are just windows onto one pattern. Pick any four or five frets and you're looking at one of them. The roots are the landmarks: if you know where the As are, you can find your place anywhere on this diagram.

The relative major: same shapes, C major pentatonic

A minor pentatonic and C major pentatonic contain exactly the same notes: A, C, D, E, G is also C, D, E, G, A. They're called relative keys. Nothing about the shapes changes — only which note you treat as home.

The relative major's root is always the minor scale's flat third, three frets above the minor root on the same string. A is at the 5th fret of the low E string, so C is at the 8th. Play the same five positions, but start and end your phrases on C and lean on C, E and G (the C major chord), and the same frets sound bright instead of bluesy.

This works in reverse for any key: to play the major pentatonic, find its relative minor three frets down and use the minor shapes. G major pentatonic is E minor pentatonic; D major pentatonic is B minor pentatonic. The major pentatonic guide covers when to use it and how to switch between the two, and adding the fourth and seventh to it gives you the full major scale.

Using it over chords

A scale is only as good as the choices you make with it. A few principles do most of the work:

Over minor keys

Over a progression in A minor (Am, G, F, for example), A minor pentatonic fits throughout. Land on A when the Am chord comes round, and you'll hear the phrase resolve.

Over the blues

Over a 12-bar blues in A (A7, D7, E7), A minor pentatonic is the standard choice, even though the chords are dominant sevenths. The scale's C rubs against the C♯ in the A7 chord, and that rub is a large part of what the blues sounds like. Bending the C slightly sharp, towards C♯, softens it. Add one more note, the flat fifth (E♭ in A), and the minor pentatonic becomes the blues scale.

Target chord tones

When the chord changes, aim for one of its notes. Over Am the targets are A, C and E; over a C chord, C, E and G; over G, the scale has G and D. You don't need to play only chord tones — just finish phrases on them. The guide to soloing over chord changes works through this with two full progressions.

Bend to the next scale note

The classic position 1 bends are a whole step: D at the 7th fret of the G string bent up to sound like E, and G at the 8th fret of the B string bent up to sound like A. Check the target pitch by playing the note two frets higher first, so you know what you're aiming for.

Moving it to other keys

Every shape moves as a block. To play position 1 in another key, put its lowest root — the one on the low E string — on the new key's note and keep the shape the same. The rest of the positions follow in the same order up the neck.

E minor is worth singling out: position 1 sits at the 12th fret, and the same shape played with open strings at the nut gives you the open E minor pentatonic used in countless riffs. To find the key quickly, you need the notes on the low E string, which our fretboard guide covers string by string.

How it connects to everything else

The fretboard: naming the notes in the box

A minor pentatonic is all natural notes, which makes it ideal for fretboard practice. Play position 1 slowly and say each note name. The roots in position 1 sit at the 5th fret of the low E string, the 7th fret of the D string and the 5th fret of the high e, exactly where the octave shapes from learning the fretboard predict.

Intervals: reading the shape

The five intervals above are the scale's DNA. Knowing the flat third is three frets above the root and the flat seventh two frets below it lets you rebuild any position from its root without a diagram.

The CAGED system: a chord for every position

Each position wraps around one of the five CAGED minor chord shapes: position 1 around the E shape, position 2 the D shape, position 3 the C shape, position 4 the A shape and position 5 the G shape. When you know which chord shape you're near, you know where its chord tones are. The CAGED system guide explains the shapes themselves.

Triads: somewhere to land

Every position contains the notes of the A minor triad, and of the C major triad too. Learning to see triads inside your scale shapes gives each phrase a destination when the chord changes.

Common mistakes

Living in position 1

The box at the 5th fret is a starting point, not the scale. If every solo starts and ends there, add position 2 next and spend a fortnight crossing between the two.

Learning shapes without the root

A position without its roots marked is just dots. Know where the roots are in every position you learn, and start and end practice phrases on them.

Running the scale up and down

Playing the scale in order is a fingering exercise, not music. Practise short phrases of three to five notes with space between them, and repeat ideas rather than adding more notes.

Ignoring the chords

The scale fits the key, but each chord has its own best notes. Phrases that end on a chord tone sound intentional; phrases that end wherever the shape runs out sound like an exercise.

Bending out of tune

A bend that falls short of the next scale note sounds like a mistake. Play the target note first, then bend until the pitch matches.

A six-week practice plan

Ten to fifteen minutes a day, in A minor throughout. Keep the previous week's work as a warm-up.

1. Week 1 — Position 1 with names. Play position 1 slowly, saying each note name, then each interval. Find the three roots without looking.
2. Week 2 — Phrases, not runs. Over an A minor drone or backing track, play three-to-five-note phrases that end on A, C or E. Add the two whole-step bends.
3. Week 3 — Position 2 and the join. Learn position 2 from its shared notes with position 1. Practise sliding between them on every string.
4. Week 4 — Positions 3 to 5. Add one position every two days, each joined to the last. Then play the one-string walk from the 5th fret to the 17th on every string.
5. Week 5 — CAGED and chord tones. For each position, play the minor chord shape it surrounds, then improvise around it, landing on that chord's notes.
6. Week 6 — Relative major and a new key. Play the same positions as C major pentatonic, ending phrases on C. Then move everything to E minor and G minor.

After six weeks the scale should feel like one pattern across the neck rather than five boxes, and changing key should be a matter of finding one root.

Quick reference

The five positions in A minor

Position 5 also sits an octave lower at frets 2–5, and position 1 repeats an octave higher at frets 17–20.

The intervals in the minor pentatonic