Minor Pentatonic Scale for Jazz Guitar

As I went through college, I didn’t give enough credit to the minor pentatonic scale.

Don’t get me wrong – I spent a lot of my time and energy on developing my soloing skills. I worked hard on learning to play the changes and develop my jazz vocabulary.

But sometimes all of the material I had learned just didn’t work quite right for certain songs.

Sometimes I’d play a solo, and I wouldn’t get the reaction I wanted from the crowd. Even if I played all my best material I’d been working on. Sometimes it just didn’t work the way I wanted.

One night on stage, I played a solo with all of my best licks and “outside” playing I had been working on. I was relatively happy with my solo, but the audience gave me a polite “golf clap.”

The piano player went next. He was a monster player, and one of the nicest guys you could meet. For his solo, he pretty much just played the pentatonic scale the whole time… and he nearly got a standing ovation mid song.

What Was I Missing?

I had to think… maybe I was missing something about the pentatonic scale. I had written it off as too simple, and something that mostly beginners had to lean on.

Eventually I realized that I hadn’t fully understood why minor pentatonic scales were important in the first place. They are an essential part of playing the blues, an essential part of the jazz tradition.

When you use them well, minor pentatonic scales can connect with your audience in a way that more intellectual approaches to soloing just miss.

And sometimes, they’re the best answer for the song, the chord progression, or what’s happening in the music at a specific moment.

The minor pentatonic scale is a foundational pattern for jazz guitar. It forms a framework that you can use to navigate the fretboard, improve your ear, and play better solos.

In fact – along with jazz guitar chords, I’d say the minor pentatonic scale is one of the most important things to start with.

And as you improve, you can build just about any other minor scale on top of this framework – cutting your work in half.

Learn more about how to play the minor pentatonic scale and use it in your own playing below.

What is the Minor Pentatonic Scale?

The minor pentatonic scale is a five note scale built with the intervals: Root (1), minor or flat third (b3), perfect fourth (4), perfect fifth (5), and minor or flat 7 (b7).

I always prefer to use the term flat, rather than minor when we’re talking about intervals.

It simplifies the practical part of scale construction, and keeps us from confusing an interval name with a chord quality.

Another way you can think of building this scale is to start with the natural minor scale and remove a couple of notes.

By removing the 2 and the b6 from a natural minor scale, you end up with the correct intervals for a minor pentatonic scale.

It’s important to remember that this is only the music theory explanation of how the scale can be built.

What you really need to do is learn how to play the scale all over your guitar.

Fretboard Patterns and Positions

Let’s take a look at the 5 movable scale patterns for the minor pentatonic scale. A scale pattern is considered to be movable when there are no open strings being used.

This way you can move your scale pattern to a new fret, and now you’re playing the scale in a new key.

As long as you keep the finger pattern consistent, you’ll always be playing a minor pentatonic scale – start at the right fret for whatever key you need, and you’re good to go.

6th String Form

5th String Form

4th string Form

3rd String Form

2nd String Form

Each scale pattern lines up differently under your fingers. Because of this, you’ll find that some licks or melodies are easier for you to play in one pattern over another.

Each pattern you learn will unlock different possibilities in your playing and vocabulary, so it’s important to get a good handle on all 5 scale shapes.

Tips and Practice for Jazz Guitarists

Getting better at your minor pentatonic scales is just a matter of putting in the time – learning the patterns so that they become automatic.

Here are some of my favorite strategies for getting these scales internalized as quickly as possible:

Work on one scale at a time. Don’t try to go through the whole list of scale patterns at once. I know there’s only 5 patterns to learn, but still… you can only really learn one thing at a time. So let’s do it right.

Play the scale at every fret. I like to play the scale, move up a fret, and play the scale again. I’ll repeat until I’ve played the scale 12 times… and sometimes I’ll work my way back down the neck too.

This is a nice way to go because it accomplishes the common “play in all 12 keys” advice without thinking too hard.

Plus it gets the scales into your muscle memory fast.

Try playing along with backing tracks. There is no shortage of backing tracks for you to practice your scales along to. Personally, I like using iRealPro because it’s so user friendly.

You can find backing tracks for a minor blues, or a minor-key song like Beautiful Love to play along with as you practice.

I’ve always found that improvising even a little bit really helps you learn your scale patterns better.

Conclusion

Sometimes the minor pentatonic scale is going to be your best bet for playing a solo. Especially when you’re playing in a minor key.

And even if you don’t use it all the time, the pentatonic scale provides you with a valuable framework to help you:

• Learn the guitar fretboard
• Build other minor scales on top of the “skeleton” provided by yoru minor pentatonic scale
• Create altered dominant sounds when used as a substitution

So dig in, and start learning your minor pentatonic scales today. Are you stuck with something in your jazz guitar playing? Let me know and I’ll help you out.

Check out our complete guide to jazz guitar scales to learn more.