Linkage Part II
Next we’ll link patterns 2 and 3 together using the..... Yep you guessed it, the same minor pentatonic pattern!
Once again, the black notes are the minor pentatonic scale and the red notes are notes from the major scale position 3.
E|-O-|-O-|---|-O-|---|
B|-O-|-O-|---|-O-|---|
G|-O-|---|-O-|---|---|
D|-O-|---|-O-|-O-|---|
A|-O-|---|-O-|-O-|---|
E|-O-|-O-|---|-O-|---|
Once again, you can see that the “extra notes” that aren’t in the minor pentatonic pattern come in pairs. You have two notes on the same fret of the E and B strings that you can play with your middle finger, two notes on the same fret of the D and A strings that you can play with your pinky, and the low E string is the same as the high E string.
Also, for the visual learners (like myself) I’ll also share this handy visual for these two patterns. If you look at the extra notes not in the minor pentatonic scale for Positions 2 and 3, you can see that the extra notes are on frets that are exact
opposites of each other...
In this diagram the
Red notes are the extra notes for Position 2 and the
Green notes are the extra notes for Position 3.
For both patterns 2 and 3, the extra two notes on E and B strings are both on the two frets “inside” of the minor pentatonic patters (inside the notes that the index and pinky fingers play), but they swap places. This same thing goes for the low E string note as well.
For pattern 2 the extra notes on the G and D strings are on frets “outside” (above) the minor pentatonic pattern, and then for pattern 3, they move down to the next string and also jump down below the pentatonic pattern, so they are still on the frets on the “outside”.
Anyways, hopefully that little diagram/visual aid will help remember these two patterns, they are similar, but opposites of each other. So if you can remember one of them, then you can figure out the other by remembering that each of the “extra” notes move to opposite frets.
Now that you have the fingering patterns down, you will start the scale two frets up from where position 2 started (or four frets up from the root note of the key). Using the key of G major again, you would start this pattern on 4 frets up from the G note on the 3rd fret of the low E string, which would be the 7th fret.
So to summarize, for the first 3 patterns start out by by first finding the root note for the Major Key (relative major if you are playing in a minor key) on the low E string (6th string) and you can play
Major Scale Pattern 1. Then for
Major Scale Pattern 2, you can
slide up 2 frets and start playing the Minor Pentatonic Pattern and then include the “extra notes” for Pattern 2 in order to play the Major Scale Pattern 2. Then for
Major Scale Pattern 3, just slide up two more frets and play the Minor Pentatonic Pattern and the include the “extra notes” for Pattern 3 in order to play the Major Scale Pattern 3.
This allows you to use the minor pentatonic scale to immediately jump to position 2 or 3 from anywhere on the fretboard without having to worry about hitting “wrong” notes, then once you are there you can start adding in the extra notes from each pattern to make use of the full major scale pattern... Of course you could also just use the minor pentatonic the entire time pattern! lol