Scale Fluency: Pentatonics

By Graham Tippett

Five boxes is not the same as fluency

Most guitarists have the pentatonic patterns under their fingers and still can't play the scale properly. Put them in a key they don't favour, or ask them to move through a solo from the bottom of the neck to the top, and it falls apart - because five memorised boxes with grey areas between them isn't a picture of the fretboard. It's five pictures with gaps.

This is a practice guide, not another set of patterns

You already know the shapes. What's missing is a method for practising them that produces fluency rather than familiarity: specific one- and two-octave approaches, worked both vertically and horizontally, in all twelve keys.

The result is one continuous picture of any pentatonic scale across the whole neck - minor, major, and the variations in between.

Ninety days, honestly

This isn't quick. Committed daily practice over about three months is what it takes to solo effortlessly in all twelve keys, and I'd rather say so than promise it in a week. The work is repetitive by design. What you get for it is the thing most players never quite reach.

Who it's for

Players whose primary scales are the minor and major pentatonic and who want them fully mapped rather than partly memorised. Start here if that's you.

Book 1 of Scale Fluency. The patterns across the series are deliberately similar, so the groundwork you lay here carries into the modal volumes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08DSYQ2DP
• ISBN13: 9798670403702
• Release Date: July 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 38 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 8.0" x 10.0"