Blues Pentatonic Mastery

Now that we know the 5 forms of the Pentatonic, where the blues note goes, and how to use it in both a major and minor context, let's put it all together.

I admit the image below is a bit of an eyesore, but it's got all the information we've learned so far compiled in one place.

Here,

• The RED notes are your minor key root notes.

• The GREEN notes are your major key root notes.

• The BLUE notes are your blues note.

And, of course, the backgrounds are color coded according to the 5 forms.

You'll want to spend lots of time playing these forms one after another. For example:

• Play Form 1 from the lowest to highest note,

• Play Form 2 from the highest to lowest note,

• Play Form 3 from the lowest to highest note, etc.

As you go, call out when you hit the root note, and when you hit the blues note. If you're able to, try calling out every interval as you play it, or name the notes themselves as covered in Digging Deeper I. There's plenty of other ideas there as well for how to take your scales to the next level. Be sure to try it out with the pentatonic forms.

Lastly, we also want to be able to play the 5 forms individually. This can be tricky! Often, players start from Form 1 and work their way up to the higher forms from there. But can you play, for example, Form 4 on its own right now?

To test yourself, simply choose a fret on the low E. 5th fret, for example.

Now play through each form, from lowest to highest note and back, but each time begin the form at the 5th fret. Can you do it? If not, take some time to study the form that you weren't able to visualize on it's own.

Learning the forms individually like this will deepen your understanding and recall! It will also come in very handy for improvising over the 12 bar blues.