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3-Note-Per-String Pentatonics - Playing in Octaves

Chris Feener 256 lessons

So let's start in A minor. The A minor pentatonic consists of 5 notes, obviously, but we'll be playing in groupings of 6 which will cover all 5 pentatonic notes. This isn't overly "conventional" in the sense that we aren't sticking to an ascend of one note intervals - we're covering a greater area, but due to the stretches on both strings, we'll sometimes cover notes more than once.

Take a look at "Concept - Position 1 (3 Octaves)"

We're playing A, C, D on the E string, and then D, E, G on the A string. That gives us A, C, D, E, G - the entire minor pentatonic on two strings. Notice, however, that we play a D note on the E string, and then again, we see a D note on the A string (5th fret). Here's where we get the "note-doubling" effect, and this pattern will be apparent in most exercises.

In the second bar, the exact same sequence is phrased, except a full octave higher ("down two, up two"), and then again in measure three ("down two, up three").

"Exercise" gives us a demonstration of the first position executed in the beginning in a cool ascend/descend 16th note picking pattern through three octave positions.

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