An Easy Guitar Solo in the Major Pentatonic Scale (Key of E)

To download the tab and jam track for this lesson, be sure to visit http://www.activemelody.com/lessons/f... - This lesson is a continuation of our look at understanding the major and minor pentatonic scales and how they work together. In this lesson you'll learn a very basic lead part that has several repetitive licks, which allows you to hear how the same lick can be repeated even though the chords underneath may be changing.

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Closed Caption:

everyone this is brian from active
melody com I got a lot of positive
response to the last few days from
people that are really liking these
beginner blues guitar lesson so I'm
going to keep up with this series for a
little while and in this lesson I've
composed the new jam track so you can
make sure you go to get active melody
com to download this one for free but
this is also in the key of E and this
one is a little blues easier than the
previous one but it is still in the key
of e so we're going to look at two parts
we look at how to play a solo in the
major pentatonic scale and how to play
some stuff in the minor pentatonic scale
which is a blue scale so let's take a
look at what we're going to learn
ok
yeah
yeah
yeah
all right so let me explain what's going
on here
we're in the key of E and we've been in
the key of E for the last several
lessons as a very quick recap you
remember when we were playing in the key
of E the minor pentatonic scale and the
the root position for that scale was
here on you the notes were 15 15th fret
12
15:12 working 12 14 12 14 12 15 12
remember that stuff
minor pentatonic scale for the key of E
and remember if we split everything down
three frets that gave us the major
pentatonic scale so that was 12 9 12 911
911 911 912 nine
so those are the notes in the major
pentatonic scale now I very briefly just
sort of breeze through that but if you
want more detail
make sure you check out a previous
lesson because I kind of spell out what
those boundaries aren't kind of how it
works
okay so um so what I played here the
little so low that i played was actually
in the the major pentatonic scale can
tell because it's a little happier
sounding it's not quite as his blue 0
said you sure that's how you can tell by
your ear
but so what i did here is I started on
the ninth fret of the D string
I play a couple times
and then I hammer on to the 11th fret D
string
yeah
just like that was your first three
notes are four notes again
and then I end up here on the ninth fret
g string little vibrato -
and then I do this thing where i go
but I know what you're probably saying
hey wait a minute that's not part of the
scale we didn't learn something down
there and you'd be right we actually you
remember the scale boundaries work so we
didn't learn anything down here but if
you'll notice the note itself is the
exact same note that is here on the
twelfth fret 6th string is the same note
so what I did and the reason that I
chose this to play it here versus here
is because I did this little slide thing
mmm mmm
and all those little nuances little
slides and vibrato that's what really
makes you playing sound sound good so if
I played it straight to it sound as well
as kind of corny vs
more like the voice would be if you were
singing something like that
so um so my point in that is to show
that it's okay to go outside of this box
and we're going to learn you can
actually go all up and down the neck but
we're going to do that actually did that
two places in this solo I slit I kind of
broke outside the box to hit this note
and then I do it up here and a in a
minute i'll show you that part
so there's that first bit of the solo
and the nice thing about this LOL is
that part just repeats itself
so you play it by 2 times then you go
and you play it the third in time when
once the the cords changed to a you can
play the same rhythm a flight again for
a fourth time
and then for the turnaround i do this
little little lipstick looks like that
and what I'm doing there as I'm starting
on the eleventh fret D string then i'm
going to the ninth fret g string
eleventh fret g string then I do this
little bend release pull off thing it
looks like this
so notice i just picked that once
and when I to get that note i'm just
kind of licking
you could pick it but it happens so
quickly it
it really works best to just sort of do
a pull off there
so then we land on the DS or I'm sorry
the g string eleventh fret
yeah
and then I play and notice again I'm
going outside of the boundaries when I
play
that note is outside of the boundary
that I showed you
although notice the note the exact same
note as this here on the ninth fret so
it's
and there again the reason I chose this
one vs this one is because i get slide
into it
I suppose you could slide this way
although it would be a lot more
challenging
and then I land on the twelfth fret D
string so I kind of wrap this all up
with a little bit
and that's just a bend there on the g
string eleventh fret it's just
gonna hit that three times doesn't have
to just you could go
all kinds of different ways to get in
that
but yeah so that's kind of that little
solo then I think the last notes are
are just there hammer on on the word on
the D string hammer on the two from the
9th fret to the 11
back to the night alright so hopefully
that lesson made sense to you and
hopefully you can see where I'm trying
to go with this
you know what showing you the the
boundaries of the major in the minor
pentatonic scale and how those two
skills work together and if once you
learn that once it clicks with you
it will open up a whole new language -
you be able to improvise and play along
with just about any kind of music so
make sure you download the jam track for
this lesson if you haven't already and
practice with it just practice you know
playing notes in those scales and
practice the nuances and the bins and
the slides all that stuff is what makes
you sound like a real player
so that's all i have for this lesson
we'll see in the next one