The 5 pentatonic shapes are a staple of learning rock or blues guitar, though truth be told most guitarists generally use 3 of them at the most. In our latest book, ‘Woodshedder’s Guide to Guitar Scales‘, we reduced … Read more
Pentatonics Pro is a side project I’ve been working on for a while now which involved mapping out the 330 possible pentatonic scales into a collection of scale patterns (combinations of 5 intervals) along with a method to explore them … Read more
There’s no doubt about it, Eric Clapton is possibly one of the most influential guitarists of all time and while he tends to get overlooked these days in favor of the the more technical players, there’s a lot you can … Read more
This is a common problem among guitar players: they get very good at getting some great licks and runs from major and minor pentatonic scales, then decide to learn modes and it all goes to shit. This is mainly because … Read more
I’m a huge fan of pentatonic scales, but not just the major and minor ones; there’s so much more you can do with pentatonics. After all, pentatonic means 5 tones—any 5 tones—and there are literally thousands of combinations available, if … Read more
I love outside playing, the more outrageous the better. I think it was Allan Holdsworth who called it, ‘playing all the rude notes’, and he was definitely right. These are the notes that stick out like a sore thumb but … Read more
I’ve never really been into learning other people’s guitar solos note-for-note, so you won’t find a whole lot of those type of articles on this blog. What I do like to do occasionally is take a closer look at how … Read more
You’ve probably had the ‘pleasure’ of being in a guitar shop and hearing someone noodling in A minor or E minor pentatonic while trying out a guitar, so much so that you probably recognize those scales without even looking at … Read more
Guitarists tend to get fixated on box 1 of the minor pentatonic scale and milk it to death. You may know the shapes for the other four boxes, but how often do you actually use them? Box 1 is by … Read more