Check out this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the tabs to go along with the video lesson so you can easily follow along.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you a Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick that’s in E minor, but this is a movable shape, you can move it around wherever you want. It’s based out of the first pattern of the pentatonic scale, the box pattern that hopefully you already know, but if not I’ll quickly go over the sequence for you. Anyway, this is a lick that’s kinda fast but it’s easy to get this lick up to speed once you get the sequence down, just a little bit of practice it’s easy to get it up to speed. This is a really commonly used lick I’ve heard in lots of different songs and solos and stuff, maybe not the entire sequence, but sections of it and stuff we’ll talk a little bit about that more in a minute.
Anyway, be sure to click on the link in the description so you can get the tab so you can follow along. Let’s get close up and take a look at this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick.
The Pentatonic Scale
All right, so we’re doing this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick in E minor, so we’re going to be using pentatonic pattern number one starting on E, so we’re going to go to the 12th fret on our low E and the scale pattern is 12 15 and we go to the A string, 12 14 D string, 12 14 G string, 12 14 B string 12 15 and high E 12 15. All right so like I said you could easily transpose this into a different location. You would just do the same sequence that we’re going to go over, but you would just move it, I’ll show you how to do that when we get there.
The Lick
All right, for this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick, starting off you’re going to want to put your first finger onto the 12th fret of the high E and then you can either use, (typically I would use my pinky on the step and a half and then when it goes down to one step I’d use my first and third but where we’re up at the 12th fret and above a lot of times I will some use my third finger instead of my pinky just because the frets are closer together), so either way you want to do it. So we start off you want to put both fingers down so that way we can pick and then do a pull-off to that 12. So this is based off of a little pattern that’s based on a couple of strings at a time. So we’ve got 15 pull-off to 12 and then we go to this the B string and hit 15 and then back to 12 on the high E and then back to the B string 12 15. So that’s the sequence, so then what we’re going to do is we’re just going to continue to do that same pattern, but now we’re going to do it based off of the B and the G strings and then the G and the D strings and then the D and the A strings and then the A and the low E. So pick, pull, pick, pick, pick, and pull, so after we start on the B string. So our first finger is already here on the 12th fret where it needs to be so now we just pick up the 15th fret and again I’m using my third finger here, but you could use your fourth, if you were doing it in a lower key, if we were doing it down in A or something, then we would want to for sure use your fourth finger.
So now we’re going to pick to 12 and then go to 14 on the G string and then back to 12 on the B string and then back to the G string 14 12. Now we’re starting on the 12 on the G string, so first finger is already on the 12th fret of the G string, so we put our third finger on the 14th fret, pick and pull-off 14th fret of the D string back to the 12th fret of the G string and then 14 12 on the D string. Now we’re starting on the D string, so again our first finger is already on 12 where it needs to be, so we 15 pulled 14 pulled to 12 to 14 on the A string, back to the 12th fret of the D string and then back to the A string 14 pull to 12. Now 14 we start on the A string, 14 pull to 12, to the 15th fret of the low E back to 12 of the A string and then 15 12 on the low E. So the whole Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick sequence really slow.
All right, so what you’re going to want to do first is I would just memorize the sequence of notes so that way you’re not having to think about what your fretting hand is doing too much and then you can focus on your picking hand. So I’m starting off, I’m picking a down stroke pull-off and then an upstroke when I go to the B string and then a down stroke when I go back to the E and then an upstroke when I go back to the to the B string. So you’re going to want to work on it with a metronome and just start off slow and just slowly build up your speed. This is one of the first licks that I learned that I was actually able to play fast. It took me a while of practice and everything to do it, but then I got it to where I could play it quick and it sounds cool. It’s recognizable enough that if somebody hears it, it has that familiar subconscious familiarity to it they may not be able to say “hey that’s from such and such song”, but it sounds cool, it’s fast and it sounds and looks harder than it actually is.
Transposing Into Another Key
Okay so if we we’re going to transpose this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick into another key all you simply do is just move the shape to wherever it was you wanted to do it. So if we wanted to play it in G minor, then we could just move up so the frets that our first finger plays are all on the 15th fret. So like I said it’s easy to move this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick around wherever you wherever you want to play it or you need it to be for whatever you’re doing.
Conclusion
All right, so I did a lesson just recently that had some other kinds of garden variety pentatonic licks and stuff and if you haven’t already checked that out here’s a link for it right here. Check that out because it has some other cool licks that you could use and you could actually incorporate this into them and them into this and you know come up with more stuff, more of your own ideas.
Anyway, that is all I’ve got for you today. If you liked this Quick And Easy Minor Pentatonic Lick video be sure to give it a thumbs up. Leave me a comment down below if there’s something that you would like to see covered in a future lesson by either myself or one of the other instructors at GuitarControl.com.
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For more great soloing ideas check out Super Charged Soloing.
