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Chapter 9: Playing Up the Neck
159
pentatonic scale position is the one nicknamed home position. This position
is the one you play most often from, and if you decide to play high notes or
low notes, you leave “home,” but you eventually return.
The A minor pentatonic scale is just five half-steps higher than E minor, so it’s
the same as the E minor pentatonic moved up five frets. This puts the A minor
pentatonic scale in fifth position, and the open strings used to play the notes
of the scale all become fifth-fret notes. You use the closed-position example in
A minor as a basis to derive other pentatonic positions.
Figure 9-2 shows the minor pentatonic scale transposed to the fifth fret (where
your first finger plays, and is anchored to, the fifth fret).The box diagram above
the staff shows the collection of notes in a lead pattern; it isn’t a chord.
Figure 9-2:
The A minor
pentatonic
scale at the
fifth fret.
5fr.
There are a couple of things going on when you play this new scale form:
The scale that you originally learned in open position has been transported
up the neck, so you now play it by using all fretted notes.
The faithful E minor pentatonic scale has been transposed to the key of
A, so you have to adjust the chords accordingly to play in the right key.
(Moving anything on the neck transposes it to a different key.)
Figure 9-3 is a passage that uses the descending A minor pentatonic scale,
starting at the highest note — the first string, eighth-fret C.
Figure 9-3:
A passage
that uses
the
descending
fifth-position
A minor
pentatonic
scale.
T
A
B
8 5
8 5
7 5
7 5
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7 5
8 5
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