Pentatonic Substitution
The pentatonic you already know, over the chords you don’t. One shape, six chords, nothing new to learn.
19 pages · 30 diagrams · instant download
I don’t think the scale is the problem
The minor pentatonic is the first scale almost everybody learns and the one most players are still reaching for twenty years later. The usual complaint is that it gets boring. The usual cure is to learn more scales.
That diagnosis is wrong. You haven’t worn the scale out — you’ve only ever played it in one place, over one chord. Five notes held still over an Am7 are a blues lick. The same five notes held still over a Cmaj7 are a C major triad with a ninth and a thirteenth in it, which is a completely different sound you didn’t have to learn.
So move the chord instead of the scale. Your hand doesn’t move, your vocabulary doesn’t change, and the sound does. That is the whole of pentatonic substitution, and the only hard part has always been knowing which chords a given shape will take.
This guide answers that with a rule you apply by looking at your own hand, not by counting intervals in your head.
The rule, in two moves
Not a sample chapter — the thing the guide is built on. It’s free, so there’s no sense hiding it.
Put your first finger on the lowest note of the pentatonic shape. That note, and the two directly above it on the next two strings at the same fret, are the roots of three minor chords this pentatonic serves.
Three frets up from each of those is its relative major, and the pentatonic serves those too.
Six chords. You find them by looking at your hand, and the shape never moves.
Solid dots are the three minor roots — same fret, three adjacent strings. The heavy outlines three frets up are the relative majors, which aren’t in the pentatonic but are found from it.
It works because ascending fourths and adjacent strings are the same thing on a guitar. Stack three fourths from any note and you get the three minor chords a pentatonic covers — which is a piece of geometry you’ve had in your fingers since you learned to tune, pointed at a different problem.
What the same five notes become
One shape, three of the six chords, with every dot labelled by what it is against the chord underneath. Filled dots are the notes doing the work.
A blues scale over Am7. A major triad with a 9th and a 13th over Cmaj7. An Fmaj7 without its root, plus a 9th and a 13th, over Fmaj7. Same frets, same fingers, three different pieces of music.
The pentatonic substitution chart
The whole method on one page, which is the last page of the guide. Every interval is measured from the root of the chord you are playing over, and the worked column uses C so you can check it against a fretboard rather than trusting me.
| Chord | Pentatonic root | Over C | What you get | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minor 7 | on the root | C min pent | 1 b3 11 5 b7 | the most inside sound |
| Major 7 | a minor 3rd below | A min pent | 13 1 9 3 5 | the relative minor |
| brighter | a major 3rd above | E min pent | 3 5 13 M7 9 | adds the major 7th |
| brightest | a semitone below | B min pent | M7 9 3 #11 13 | adds the #11 — lydian |
| Dominant 7 | a minor 3rd below | A min pent | 13 1 9 3 5 | no b7 — a 6/9 sound |
| with the b7 | a fifth above | G min pent | 5 b7 1 9 11 | watch the 11th |
| Altered dominant | a minor 3rd above | Eb min pent | #9 #11 b13 b7 b9 | every note a tension |
| Half-diminished | a fourth above | F min pent | 11 b13 b7 1 b3 | no b5 — comper supplies it |
Indented rows are extensions — brighter or more tense options for the same chord, not separate rules. Every row in the guide has its own diagram, so you can see the shape rather than work it out from the degrees.
And it holds over whole progressions
The payoff is when one shape covers several chords in a row, so you stop switching scales mid-phrase and start playing lines that go somewhere. There are five progressions in the guide with the coverage marked. Here’s the one everyone wants:
E minor pentatonic over all three. It gives you 9 11 5 13 1 on the Dm7, 13 1 9 3 5 on the G7, and 3 5 13 M7 9 on the Cmaj7 — a ii–V–I played without moving your hand.
Load those three chords into a looper, play one shape over the top, and you’ll hear the point faster than reading about it.
What’s in it
The argument
Why more scales is the wrong answer to a boring pentatonic, and what moving the chord instead actually does.
The rule
Two moves, one diagram, six chords. The fourths geometry that makes it a shape rather than a calculation.
All six, drawn out
Every one of the six chords with the pentatonic over it, each dot labelled, so you can see what the five notes become.
The one that doesn’t work
There’s a chord the rule hands you that you shouldn’t take, and why I’d rather tell you now than let you find out on a gig.
The brightness chain
Each pentatonic a fifth above the last brightens the sound by exactly one degree, until it stops. Where it stops and why.
Dominants, altered and half-diminished
Three extensions for anyone who wants them, each with its own one-line rule and its own diagrams.
Load up your looper
Five progressions with the pentatonic marked for each, including a ii–V–I that one shape covers end to end.
The chart
The whole method on a single page, worked in C, with a diagram reference for every row. The page you keep.
What it won’t do
It won’t give you more scales, and that’s the point. If what you want is a pile of new pentatonic shapes to learn, I’ve written other books that do exactly that, and this isn’t one of them. This one argues you can get a long way before you need them.
Two of the substitutions lean on whoever is playing the chord. Over a half-diminished chord the pentatonic states almost nothing on its own — it has no flat fifth in it, which is the entire difference between half-diminished and minor. That’s said plainly in the guide rather than buried, because you’ll hear it the first time you try it alone.
It’s nineteen pages, not a course. One idea, a rule for using it, and thirty diagrams. A method that needed two hundred pages to explain wouldn’t be much of a method.
A few things worth knowing
Who is this for?
Guitarists who can already play the minor pentatonic and suspect they’re playing it in one place over one chord. You need to know what a chord symbol means. You don’t need to read music and there isn’t any in here.
Is it really free?
Yes. It’s pay what you want with a zero minimum — put in zero and the download works. Pay something if it was useful and nothing if it wasn’t.
Does this work for major pentatonic too?
It’s the same five notes. A major pentatonic is its relative minor pentatonic three frets down, so every substitution in the guide is already a major pentatonic substitution read from the other end. The guide uses minor throughout because that’s the shape people have in their hands.
Isn’t this just modes with extra steps?
The notes overlap, but the method doesn’t. Modal thinking asks you to pick a parent scale per chord and change your fingering. This asks you to leave your fingering alone and look at where the chord root sits relative to your hand. Same destination, far less to carry.
How does this relate to your other pentatonic books?
Alternative Pentatonics teaches twenty-eight new pentatonic scales sorted by chord type, and Beyond Pentatonics uses the pentatonic as a springboard. This guide is the cheaper route you should try first. If you work through it and still want more raw material, those two are where to go.
Is there a way to practise this?
A looper and the five progressions at the back of the guide. Failing that, the free guitar tools on the site will build the chords for you to play over.
Play your pentatonic over an Am7. Now put a Cmaj7 underneath it and play exactly the same thing. If that sounded like a different scale, you never needed one.
Pay what you want · £0 minimum