A minor pentatonic scale on guitar

The notes of the A minor pentatonic scale

A C D E G

Formula: 1 ♭3 4 5 ♭7. Steps from note to note: 3 2 2 3 2 semitones (one and a half, whole, whole, one and a half, whole).

Natural A minor without its 2nd and 6th (B and F). The same five notes are the C major pentatonic scale.

In Hz, from A2: A2 110.0 · C3 130.8 · D3 146.8 · E3 164.8 · G3 196.0.

The A minor pentatonic scale on guitar

One position, frets 4–8, low E string first: low E: 5 8 (A C) · A: 5 7 (D E) · D: 5 7 (G A) · G: 5 7 (C D) · B: 5 8 (E G) · high E: 5 8 (A C). 0 = open string.

The root A sits at fret 5 on the low E string and at fret 0 on the A string. Slide the same shape there for any other root.

How to practise the box

Play it up and down slowly, index finger on the 5th fret, ring or pinky on the 7th and 8th, one note per click of a metronome. Then play it in threes (A C D, C D E, D E G…) and bend the G string at the 7th fret up a whole step, from D to E: that bend is half the blues vocabulary. Every A on the board is lit, so you can see where the box repeats twelve frets higher.

More scales

Minor pentatonic scale on guitar A minor pentatonic scale A major scale on guitar A minor scale on guitar A harmonic minor scale A major pentatonic scale A minor: scale and chords

How this page works

Hear it plays the scale up and down at 100 BPM on one of four Brumm sounds. Take it gives the same notes as a MIDI file and a WAV. − and + move the root. Every note here is computed from the formula.

Sources

Scales and modes: Open Music Theory, musictheory.net. Piano fingerings: the standard scale-book fingerings (ABRSM scale books; Hanon, The Virtuoso Pianist, part 3). Trumpet valves: the standard B♭ trumpet fingering chart (Yamaha, Bach). Hz: A4 = 440 Hz, ISO 16.

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