Pentatonic Substitution - One shape, six chords

You already know the minor pentatonic. It's 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.

I don't think the scale is the problem. You've only ever played it in one place, over one chord. Move the chord instead of the scale and the same five notes turn into something else entirely, without you learning anything new or moving your hand.

This is a short guide with one idea in it, and a rule for using it that isn't a calculation.

THE RULE

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 is its relative major, and it serves those too.

Six chords. You find them by looking at your own hand, and the shape never moves.

It works because ascending fourths and adjacent strings are the same thing on a guitar — a piece of geometry you've had in your fingers for years, pointed at a different problem.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• The rule, in two moves, with the diagram that shows all six chords at once
• Every one of the six drawn out, so you can see what the same five notes become over each chord
• The one that doesn't work, and why I'd rather tell you now than let you find out on a gig
• Three extensions for anyone who wants them — dominant chords, altered dominants and half-diminished, each with its own rule
• Five looper progressions with the pentatonic marked for each, including a ii–V–I that one shape covers from end to end
• The whole method on a single page at the back
• Thirty fretboard diagrams in all

WHO IT'S FOR

Guitarists who can already play the 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.

If you're moving toward jazz chords and finding the grips harder than the ideas, this is a short way in that uses something you already own.

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, I've written other books that do that and this isn't one of them.

Two of the substitutions state almost nothing on their own and lean entirely on whoever is playing the chord. That's said plainly in the guide rather than buried, because you'll hear it the first time you try them alone.

FORMAT

PDF, 19 pages, 8.5" × 11". Instant download, yours to keep, readable on anything.

It's free. Pay what you want if it was useful, and nothing if it wasn't.