Pentatonic Practice Land

Transform the way you practice the go to scale for guitarists

Guitar Practice Zone Ebook 2018 Written by Andy Bowen

1st Edition

Forward 3 ...............................................................Practice Guidance: 3 ...........................................................................................................

Rhythm 4 ...............................................................Quarter Notes 5 ...................................................................................................................Sixteenth Notes 7 .................................................................................................................Triplets 8 ..............................................................................................................................

Combining Rhythms 9 ............................................Technique 11 .........................................................Vertical Pentatonics 12 ...........................................Groupings 15 ..........................................................Final Thoughts 20..................................................

Forward

This e-book has one intention; to offer practical suggestions on how to practice pentatonic scales. Practicing your scales with different methods will have a positive impact on other areas of your musicianship. The methods in this ebook will help you develop:

• Your sense of rhythm and timing.

• Technique

• Phrasing

• Provide you with strategies to practice other types of scales

I have used A minor pentatonic for all of the exercises in this book for simplicity. Ideally you would be confident in playing the five positions of this scale to begin with. You can find them here on my website with suggested fingerings. Audio of each exercise can be found here.

Practice Guidance:

• Use a metronome. I prefer a digital one in which you can see the beats. There is often the option to accent beat one also.

• Count (this is essential!). I’ve included the counting on most exercises.

• Start slowly and gradually increase the tempo. You could keep a record in a notepad or if you are feeling geeky use a spreadsheet to document your metronome speed progress.

• Ensure your picking hand is relaxed and that there is no tension. This can be caused by holding the pick too firmly.

• Use alternate picking

• Try the concepts in different scale positions

Chapter One

Rhythm Before you play a scale in time (e.g to a beat, metronome or backing track) I would suggest being confident with the following:

1. Being able to play the scale in five positions over the entire guitar neck. You can download the five positions of the minor pentatonic over at my website here.

2. Being aware of what notes you are playing. People often find this difficult, but the minor pentatonic contains just five notes and that sequence is continuous.

Once this has been achieved you can introduce timing and rhythm. In this chapter we are going to look at how you can practice your scale with different rhythms. Namely the following:

Unsure what some of these rhythms are? We’ll cover their names and how to count them as we go.

Quarter Notes

When there are four beats in the bar the quarter note is worth one beat. When playing the following exercise you need to count 1,2,3,4. The exercise below uses position one of the A minor pentatonic.

Exercise 1a:

Try playing all five positions of the pentatonic with this rhythm to a metronome. Remembering the following:

• Count as you play

• Be consistent with both picking and fingering

Eighth Notes

8th notes gives us two notes per beat. When playing the following exercises make sure you are counting 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. The number is known as the strong part of the beat and the and is the weaker part of the beat. Pick down on the numbers and up on the ands. This exercise uses position two of the A minor pentatonic.

Exercise 1b:

Now try this with the other positions of the A minor pentatonic.

Sixteenth Notes

16th notes gives us four notes per beat and 16 notes per bar when there is four beats in the bar. Exercise three uses position three of the A minor pentatonic. When playing exercise 3, don’t forget to count as shown below.

Exercise 1c:

Again…try this with the other positions of the scale.

Triplets

Above is a bar of eight note triplets. A triplet is three notes in the space of one beat. They are evenly spaced and can be counted as 1 -trip -let, 2-trip-let, 3-trip-let, 4-trip-let. This exercise uses position 4 of the A minor pentatonic. Don’t forget to count as instructed above.

Exercise 1d:

Combining Rhythms

In the next few exercises we are going to combine some of the rhythms that we have covered so far. This will add variety to your playing and enable you to increase tension in your solos, or as I like to call it; shifting gear. There are other rhythms of longer and shorter duration not covered here, so perhaps to extend your learning this is something you could look at.

Exercise 1e: Quarter notes and eight notes

Exercise 1f:

Exercise 1g:

There are other rhythms and corresponding rests that you could also learn. The ones that I have included just scratches the surface. Check out the recommended reading section on www.guitarpracticezone.com for my top picks for books to develop your knowledge and application of rhythm.

Chapter Two

Technique Adding technique into your scale practice is a good way to develop multiple areas of your musicianship simultaneously. In this chapter we will use four key techniques that will freshen up your approach to practicing the minor pentatonic.

Exercise 2a: Hammer ons

Exercise 2b: Pull Offs

Now try using both of these techniques with other positions of the scale and with different rhythms.

Chapter Three

Vertical Pentatonics In this chapter the exercises focus on breaking away from the positions and playing the scale descending and ascending the neck.

Exercise 3a: Ascend on B and E This exercise starts in position 5 and works it way up the neck through the positions, just

playing notes on the B and E strings.

Exercise 3b: Descend on E and B

Exercise 3c: Ascend and then descend

Exercise 3d: Use 3 strings and triplets

You could try these previous exercises on different string combinations and also with different rhythms covered in chapter one. You could also try incorporating techniques such as bends, pull offs and hammer ons for variety.

Chapter Four

Groupings Our final practice technique helps create some really interesting sounds. We will achieve this by playing the scale in groupings of 3,4, 5 and 6 notes. Again, all of these exercises can be moved into different positions and you can add techniques or vary the rhythm with which you play them.

Exercise 4a: Groups of 4 Using an 8th note rhythm in this exercise you play four notes and then move back to the second note of the scale, again playing four notes. The pattern continues up the scale.

Exercise 4a: Continued

Exercise 4b: Groups of 3

Taking the same concept, this time we play groups of three. E.g. ACD, CDE, DEG etc.

This naturally works well with a triplet rhythm. Once you are comfortable with this you could try playing hammer ons ascending the scale and then pull offs descending.

Exercise 4c: Groups of 5 Groups of 5 feel quite unusual at first. This is because you end up starting subsequent groups of 5 on the weak part (the and) of the beat. Again, experiment incorporating pull

offs and try in the other positions.

Exercise 4d: Groups of 6 This exercise isn’t strictly groupings of 6. It does still have a strong pattern though and is very effective for fast runs. You could also try this with an 8th note rhythm.

Exercise 4e: Mixing groups of 5 and 6

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this ebook has provided you with a few fresh approaches to how you practice

scales and more specifically the minor pentatonic scale. They are all concepts that you can incorporate into your improvising and I’d encourage you to be creative with how you do this. You might take snippets of some of the ideas rather than playing all way through a position. This will make it sound more musical and less exercise/scale like. Don’t forget the techniques at your disposal which can also make phrases come to life.

I’d also encourage you to use these methods with other scales that you learn. Some of the concepts will be considerably harder with 7 note scales such as the major scale. The groupings in particular will be much more challenging than the pentatonic which has two notes per string. The benefit of this kind of practice is that you are not just practicing scales up and down mindlessly. You are working on rhythm, technique and phrasing, making it a very efficient way to practice.

Finally, thank you for checking out my ebook and online content. If you don't already subscribe to my YouTube channel then please check it out here.

Andy Bowen