Welcome back! I wanna give you one of the most killer pentatonic guitar scale lessons of the
week.
What I love about banjo players is the way they approach scales. It seems like they are always
using some kind of cool pattern that gives it this unique sound; and if they play it at a very fast
speed it sounds even better. Part of it I guess it’s the hybrid picking technique they use a lo and
the legato. Well, today I wanna show some really great sounding patterns that will make you
pentatonic scale sound way better. This lick is in D minor pentatonic and includes hammerons.
Let’s take a look at it:
Look good huh? I use this type of patterns a lot lately. I personally play them at a faster speed
but you can, and should, try them out at a slower tempo. You could also play it backwards and
change it up a little, like this:
Now it sounds more a banjo player right? One piece of advice I would give you is to turn down
the distortion knob in your amp, it will be harder to play but if you keep trying, you’ll make it.
Also, when you turn down the distortion, you will have to pulloff hard in order to play backward legatos.
You could also come it with arpeggios-inspired licks, without going out of the way; you can still
use the pentatonic scale, I mean it does have minor and major arpeggios in it so why not use
them? The combination of arpeggios and the pentatonic sounds amazing, just check it out:
This pattern is a bit harder but if you master it, it sounds really awesome. They key here is to
know when to change the position of your hand. At the beginning your 3rd finger is placed on
the 10th fret but by the last note of the 2nd beat you already have to place your 3rd finger on the
12th fret, so you basically have to move your hand pretty fast.
That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and please remember to check out more of
our videos at:
