The Bass Guitar
The E minor Pentatonic scale
You can’t just sit on the root note for every song. That’s boring. Add other notes to give motion to your playing. In this lesson we will take a look at the E “Blues” scale, otherwise known as the E Minor Pentatonic scale.
What does Pentatonic mean?
Penta means “five”, and tonic means from - or of the “root” note. So, The root note plus four other notes equals the five note pentatonice scale. There are two common pentatonic scales used in all music. One is major and the other is minor. For this lesson, we will focus on the minor version.
Q: How many notes are in a key? A: Seven
The pentatonic only uses five of these seven notes. Since we are studying a scale from the key of E minor, we need to know the notes available in that scale.
The key of E minor is sometimes better understood as it’s relative major key. In this case, that major key is G major. E minor and G major are literally the same thing, except that the E minor scale starts on E and ends on D - and the G mjor scale starts on G and ends on F#.
E minor: E - F# - G - A - B - C - D
G major: G - A - B - C - D - E - F#
The E minor pentatonic structure
Since we are only focusing on E minor, we need to know the structure used for the minor pentatonic scale.
Each note in the E minor scale has a Roman numerical placement or interval.
E (I), F# (II), G (iii), A (IV), B (V), C (vi) and D (vii).
The minor pentatonic scale only needs the (I - iii - IV - V - vii)
That means, the E minor pentatonic scale needs the E, G, A, B and the D.
Let’s look at the fretboard.
In this diagram, you can see the entire fretboard from the open strings to the 15th fret. The root note “E” is marked as the black note. The other four notes are in white.
Hey! Wait a minute - there are blue squares on the fretboard. What are those notes?
Have you ever heard of “leading” notes? A leading note is a chromatic transition note or passing tone that sits between two notes in a scale. These leading notes are NOT in the scale, but they are used as a way to add a more interesting feel to the scale.
Five pentatonic shapes.
Since we have five pentatonic notes, that means that we also have five different shapes to memorize.
Position 1
Position 2
Position 3
Position 4
Position 5
Practice playing each of these five shapes by using the “same finger- same fret” method. It is very important for you to remember the position of the root note (E) for every shape. The root for each shape exists in a different place on the fretboard.
The names of the leading notes are secondary priority to the notes in the scale.
Once you have memorized each shape, you will be able to use all five of them for any of the twelve keys in music. The important thing to remember is the location of the root notes.
Practice playing from the lowest note to the highest note in each scale, then move to the next shape and play high to low. Do this all the way up the fretboard and then back down. Be creative with your exercises. Remember to try adding some of the leading notes to your scales.
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