Easy Peasy Ascending & Descending Pentatonic Licks

Learn to play two easy peasy ascending and descending pentatonic licks with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D. These two licks are not only movable within the scale itself, but also up and down the fretboard. So basically you will be able to fine tune these licks to fit whatever key or style your feeling. So be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the video instruction and you will be rockin’ these sweet licks tonight!

moveable pentatonic licks

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got two more pentatonic sequence licks like the stuff we’ve been working on in the past. We’ve got one for descending and one for ascending.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.

About The Licks

All right, so the first one here we’re going to start with the ascending one and this all right out of the minor pentatonic scale. So this is movable and you can do it in different places to play in different keys. I’m not going through the entire scale; it’s just a small section of it. So you can take the idea of it and you can move it around within the scale.

Pentatonic Lick Ascending

So here we’re doing it in E and we’re going to start here on the on the 14th fret of the D string with my third finger and then my first finger is on the 12th fret because we’re going to pick 14 pull to 12 and then hammer back on to 14… So this is all a triplet feel, so it’s like one-yel-low. And then we’re gonna go on the downbeat of two to the 12th fret on the G string with your first finger back to 14 on the D string and then back to 12 again on the G string… So we’ve already done one that was very similar to this with this same idea; this is just another way of hooking it together. So that’s the first half, the first two beats of the first measure… Now what we’re going to do is starting on beat three we’re going to shift up and we’re going to start on the B string. So now I’m going to pick 15 on the B string and pull to 12, because remember we’re out of the minor pentatonic shape, pattern one. So we’re going to pick 15 pull a 12 to 14 on the G string, so that’ll be beat three, three-yel-low and then on the B string 12 to 14 on the G back to 12, and that’s our first measure… Now starting on the second measure we’re going to start the sequence again, but now we’re moving up a string; so we’re going to start on the G string and I’m going to do 14 pull the 12 back to 14 as a triplet and then to 12 on the B string, back to 14 on the G string and then back to 12 again on the B string and that’s beat two. And then for beat three we’re going to come up to the high E string and we’re going to pick 15 pull to 12 and follow that with 15 on the B string and that’s beat three. And then for beat four we’re going to go back to 12 on the high E string and then back to 15 pull to 12 on the B string and that’s beat four… And then we’re going to end it by barring the 12th fret of the B and the high E string…

Pentatonic Lick Descending

All right, now let’s look at the descending version. So the descending version we’re going to start at the top of the scale and we’re going to pick 15 pull to 12 and then follow that with 15 on the B string; so again this is all triplets one-yel-low. Then we’re going to go back to 12 on the high E and then 15 pull of 12 on the B string and that’s beat two… 

Then we’re going to go to the G string 14 pull to 12, back to 14, back to 12 on the B string to 14 on the G string and back to 12 on the B string… Then on the second measure we’re going to be moving it down. So just like on the first one where we shifted up a string; now we’re going to shift down. So we’re going to start on the B string 15 pull the 12 and then we’re going to go to that 14 on the G string, back to 12 again on the high E string, back to 12, 14 pull to 12 on the G string. So that’s the first two beats of that second measure. Then we’re going to go to the D string 15 or excuse me 14 pull the 12 hammer to 14 and then back to 12 on the G string to 14 on the D string back to 12 and then finally ending on the 14th fret of the D string…

Moving The Licks Around

All right, so I was saying you can move these around. You could take the first one and starting it on the on the D string, the ascending one rather, and you could start it on the low E if you wanted to… however we want to do it just so it follows that same sequence. All of the notes that we’re playing are all in that E minor pentatonic scale. You can also move this around wherever you want since it’s out of that scale anywhere that you can play the scale you can play that same sequence. Now the further you go down the neck this way since the frets are further apart in your arms and more of an awkward position, it’s a lot harder. It’s a lot easier to play these licks at a higher fret. So there those are pretty cool, they’re just some ideas, hopefully this gives you some more ideas of things you can do in your own improvisation, so feel free to take any of this stuff and just dissect it make it your own.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, another installment of a little series on pentatonic sequences. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.