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The "aha" behind one-scale-per-chord. Just as triads live inside the major scale, so do pentatonic scales: a major pentatonic on the 1st, 4th, and 5th degrees, a minor pentatonic on the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th — and several of them turn out to be the very same notes seen from a different root. Best of all, those scale degrees line up vertically on the neck, so you can switch from one chord's scale to the next just by sliding a rectangle or stack up or down a single string set.
What follows is this lesson’s section of the Course Guide — you can read it here or in the full guide →
There are six pentatonic scales hidden inside the major scale. You can build major pentatonic scales starting on the 1st, 4th, or 5th scale degrees of the major scale, and all the notes will come from the original major scale. Similarly, you can build minor pentatonic scales starting on the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th scale degrees.
This is why the one-scale-per-chord approach works so well: most of the music we listen to is built from the major scale or one of its modes, so these scales are right there inside the key.
It is worth understanding that these six scales are actually only three pairs of scales, with each pair sharing the exact same notes.
| Starting scale degree | Pentatonic scale type | Major scale degrees included |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | major | 1 2 3 5 6 |
| 6 | minor | 1 2 3 5 6 |
| 4 | major | 1 2 4 5 6 |
| 2 | minor | 1 2 4 5 6 |
| 5 | major | 2 3 5 6 7 |
| 3 | minor | 2 3 5 6 7 |
Memorize this: Because of the guitar’s tuning, these minor/major pairs of root notes line up on adjacent strings. Here, we use lowercase Roman numerals to indicate minor triads and uppercase numerals to indicate major triads:
We already know that we can play any of the minor/major pairs of scales using the same rectangle or stack shape and changing which note we treat as the root. The surprising and powerful consequence of this relationship is that all we have to do to switch scales on the fly is shift our rectangles and stacks up or down a string. We’ll explore that in sections 5-5 and 5-6.
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