A Minor Pentatonic

A lot of people when learning guitar will learn this or the open E minor scale as their first lesson. I leave it a bit later as it is easy to play but harder to understand. So you normally have 7 notes in a scale right? For A minor they are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But a pentatonic only has 5. What you do here is drop the 2nd and 6th notes and get A, C, D, E, G. The 2nd and 6th notes are really ‘colourful’ and add a lot of flavour to a scale. When you take them out it makes it crisper and cleaner. And its really hard to actually sound bad as every note is a good one to finish on. But its a double edged sword – you sound great but you never explore and really cutting two notes out can limit you and the styles that you can play. My preference is to use the pentatonic but then slip into other scales to give a pop of colour. Try changing between the pentatonic and the minor in the same song. Have a look at the support material and the backing track here https://7minutemusic.com/scale/level-2/am-pentatonic/. Also the 2 octave version here https://7minutemusic.com/scale/level-3/am-scale-pentatonic-2-octave/.