Questions & Answers with Neil Hogan #2.0.8

Q. I am having a hard time understanding pentatonic guitar scales. Do I really need to learn them?

A. Any question heading into the “do I really need to learn them” direction can only be answered when you have set some goals about what kinds of things you want to be able to do on the guitar, taking into consideration a few other things as well: How much time will you have to practice and how much work are you willing to put in?

If your guitar goal is to learn some chords and strums, you love to sing folk, country, or campfire songs, and lead sing-a-longs, there is not much you would need to know about pentatonic guitar scales.

On the other hand, if you want to be able to jam along with your iPod or friends, you will probably want to play some lead parts. This is where pentatonic guitar scales can really help you.

The neat thing about them is that by using only 5 notes of the scale rather than all 7, you will usually get a note that doesn’t sound too bad as you play along. If you were to randomly play all seven notes of the major scale you would run into a lot of conflicting (dissonant) sounds. The 5 note pentatonics are basically idiot proofed as far as what notes to play.

You can also learn to play in any key by just memorizing a pattern. This can be a fairly easy way for many people to start playing lead.

This is just an intro to the subject, check here for additional articles - guitar scales.