Minor Pentatonic Scales

Neil Cursed Diamond

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Minor Pentatonic Scales are great to improvise, often used in rock, jazz, and blues. Heres a few charts for you guys using hotnanas fretboard diagram. The scale notes are highlighted in red. I will add some more later!

A
Ampent.jpg


B

Bmpent.jpg


Bb

Bbmpent.jpg


E

Empent.jpg
 
Can you give us a bit more insight on how we can use the scales specifically? I'm only a little familiar with this stuff. Thanks so much for sharing them btw!

Yes...me too...I no understand music theory
 
Can you give us a bit more insight on how we can use the scales specifically? I'm only a little familiar with this stuff. Thanks so much for sharing them btw!

Ok, this is going to be very long haha.

Let's take the most relevant key to the Ukulele, C, which unless notated differently is dictated to be major.

When your in the Key of C you have the most used chords in a progression which is C Em F and G. The reason that E is minor is because the 3rd of a major scale is always minor. (Ex. in D major F# is minor, A major C# is minor, etc.)

So you take your 1 which is C and your 5 chord which is G and have their major scales respectively which work over each other. Next you have your 1 C which works over your 4 F as well but G won't work over F. Now for the Em It will work over the 1 chord C and the 5 chord G as well as it's native chord Em. It's just playing the melodic minor over the basic 1 3 5 chord structure in a song's progression.

Hope that helps! =)
 
I like the way you've highlighted the notes - just curious about the order they should be played in.

Sorry about not replying so fast, I've been at sea.

Pretty much any order you like. Play around with those notes till you find a combination you like.
 
Sorry about not replying so fast, I've been at sea.

Pretty much any order you like. Play around with those notes till you find a combination you like.

Yep just find/make a good Blues jam track and go to town! You'll find out very quickly what notes sound better in a run and such. =)
 
You can play the notes any way you wantbut one fun thing to check out is EX1. Take that A minor pentatonic and look at the notes. Do any chords pop out at you? ACE Aminor and CEG Cmajor. You can play it over these chords.

EX2 In the key of C major there are 3 minor chords Dminor Eminor and Aminor. You can play any of these minor pentatonic scales (Dmin, Emin and Amin) over Cmajor or any chord in the key of Cmajor. Check out Aldrines vid lesson on chord families if you don't got it. It's all relative so if it's in the key it'll sound good as long as you end on a strong note in the chord.

This is a little bit of a jazzy aproach but it's a lot cooler than just playing Amin over an A minor blues vamp.:music:
 
this is some good stuff. I'm sort of newbie to the uke. I've been playing it for bout 2yrs but have always just "looked" for chords for songs rather than try to figure it out on my own. I guess the question i have is, what determines the key you are playing in? is the first chord of the song?
 
this is some good stuff. I'm sort of newbie to the uke. I've been playing it for bout 2yrs but have always just "looked" for chords for songs rather than try to figure it out on my own. I guess the question i have is, what determines the key you are playing in? is the first chord of the song?

Seeso wrote a fantastic post on how to work the chords out in this thread:

http://ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3249

Hope this helps!
 
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