When in Doubt Minor Pentatonic Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar Course

crippling loneliness is the cornerstone
of any good blues musician and we are
going to assume that you are so bluesy
that even your looper pedal has up and
left you so what do you do when you
can't lay down a rhythm track to
practice your blues licks we're going to
talk about when in doubt always minor
pentatonic so what I mean by that is
we're going to do a basic 12 bar blues
thing and we're going to cut in half the
chord part and the lead lick practicing
part with the minor pentatonic scale
right so what we're going to do is do
something in the key of E minor so the
Blues in E it would be another way of
the Blues in a minor would be another
way to look at it right so the chords
would be the first chord of B e minor
and we do this for four bars and a
twelve bar blues pattern then we have a
minor for two bars a minor for two bars
B minor for one bar a minor for one bar
and then a minor for two bars okay so
how we're going to do this is we are
going to assign the exact same minor
pentatonic scale for each of these three
chords so the e minor one we're going to
play down here by the twelfth fret so
this is going to be the e minor
pentatonic scale were going to jump to
you and you probably are knows what's
going to be twelve fifteen twelve
fourteen twelve fourteen four fourteen
twelve fifteen twelve fifteen and this
shape we're going to repeat the exact
same shape for all three of these chords
so when you go to the a minor we're
gonna do the exact same scale we're
gonna do out an a minor
so the a is the fifth fret of the
e-string five eight five seven five
seven five seven five eight five eight
and when we get to the B minor we're
gonna do the same thing in a minor but
just up two frets to the B so this the B
on the E string is the seventh fret
seven ten seven nine seven nine seven
nine seven that's okay so how we're
going to do this instead of playing it
like a backing track like one two three
four one two three four one two three
four and back we are going to cut in
half each of these bars the first half
being the chord the second half being a
pentatonic riff so we're going to start
with the e minor and the way we're gonna
do is we're gonna have them
two beats of the chord one two into the
pentatonic shape alright and then we're
gonna repeat that one two and where you
can do a really simple lick in from the
E minor pentatonic scale that starts on
the g string with a bend to the tenth
fret right so the first part of the look
again is going to slide into the octave
E which is the D string fourteen so is
it gonna be like the first way e minor
then back to E minor and again that
right there is just a Bend on the g
string ring finger back pointer finger
on this one string so again first leg
second way okay so that's gonna replace
kind of the backing track we're kind of
bringing them both in together so now
when we switch cores to the a minor
we're gonna do the exact same thing
except we're gonna do it an a minor
pentatonic spot right so now we're
dealing with this area of the neck right
here we can do the same thing for the
first bar and then for the second bar so
we've got
and then when we get to be miners spot
we do the exact same thing but we start
on the B minor pentatonic scale so B
minor so now let's put them all together
and create kind of like a 12 bar blues
thing just using the exact same
pentatonic scale I'll be rooted on the
note of the chord that we're kind of
soloing over how everyone look at it so
we start with the e 2nd bar
3rd bar 4th bar to the a part the second
bar there
2nd bar there to the B minor part to the
a minor part so again this is just a
really simple pattern that you can use
and this isn't going to be the way you
practice it like the entire time but
it's just just show you that any kind of
little lick you can throw in between
there now once you kind of get that down
and you can make the connection of the
chord and the pentatonic scale then you
can kind of get a little fancier so
instead of doing the same thing every
time
and again that's all from the same thing
then when you go to the a
and again all that was just jumping from
one chord into it's pentatonic scale you
can practice it however you want but
really the fundamental idea is being
able to connect a scale with a chord and
then taking that bar that we're already
kind of familiar with in a 12 bar blues
thing and then just kind of throwing
them together and this might not be the
most efficient way to do it because
we're actually covering a lot of ground
sometimes that can sound cool because
you get a sliding effect like you're
traveling and a pretty long distance all
the times you might want to do something
closer by like for the E minor
pentatonic scale I'm here you could do
the same thing again so that would be a
more efficient way to do it but this is
just an example of how you can just
connect different shapes all around the
neck into a 12 bar blues pattern