|
Improvisation Tools: Pentatonic
(21 Jun 02)
Exploring the Neck
Before starting this chapter you should be very familiar with the five different pentatonic patterns.
Now take your guitar, lay it down in front of you on a table and take a look at the fret board. Think about in what directions you can actually play. Thinking about a compass will help us:
Applying the compass directions to our guitar neck that means that in the whole first chapter of this article we were playing in the N - S direction, e.g. up and down. Our goal is to forget about positions and patterns and be able to play freely in all directions. I can not overemphasize how important this is.
Now that we are familiar with the different patterns we take a look on how they relate to each other. It is helpful to divide each pattern into two halves. Each half is a half of another new pattern. If your thinking is similar to mine you did not understand a word and therefore we shall do an example:
Step 1: We take the Am pentatonic in 5th position and divide it into 2 halves.
Step 2: Each half is part of another pentatonic pattern.
Am Pentatonic Neck Diagram
You can think of all pentatonic patterns as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Below is the "picture" you get when you successfully put them together.
|
|
|
Diagonal Playing >> |
|
|
|
|
