f you ever decide to play music with musicians other than guitarists (and bass players don’t count!) you will very quickly run into a situation where one of you knows a particular song in one key while the other knows it in another. The guitar has a natural disinclination towards keys that contain flats. Unless you’re incredibly adept at barre chords knowing how to transpose a song will prove to be an invaluable skill. And not only is it easy to learn, it’s actually a lot of fun when you get the hang of it.
You will need a capo for transposing so you might want to read The Under Appreciated Art of Using a Capo first.
This is how it works. If I put my capo on the first fret, every chord I play has now moved up a half step. An A chord is now a Bb (or A#). An E minor is now F minor. If I put it on the fourth fret, everything is now up two whole steps (four half steps). A C is now an E. An A minor is a C# minor. The following chart will give you some of the basic chord transpositions:
| Chord with no Capo | Actual Chord with Capo on: | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st fret | 2nd fret | 3rd fret | 4th fret | 5th fret | 6th fret | 7th fret | |
| C | C# | D | Eb | E | F | F# | G |
| G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C | C# | D |
| D | Eb | E | F | F# | G | Ab | A |
| A | Bb | B | C | C# | D | Eb | E |
| Am | Bbm | Bm | Cm | C#m | Dm | Ebm Em | |
| E | F | F# | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |
| Em | Fm | F#m | Gm | Abm | Am | Bbm | Bm |
Transposing scales
What you want to do is to look at your scale positions that you already know and figure out two things: the note on the 6th string and its relationship to your pentatonic scale. Since you are using an Em pentatonic scale (and we know that the notes are E G A B D E, let's look at what you already know:
Pos 1- 0 open E (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 3 fret G (3rd)
Pos 3- 5 fret A (4th)
pos 4- 7 fret B (5th) >Pos 5- 10 fret D (7th)
Now since we know that a Dm pentatonic scale is D F G A C D, then we can just look at where these notes fall into place on the sixth string and our patterns will remain the same (unless we have open strings to deal with):
Pos 1- 10th fret D (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 1st or 13th fret F (3rd) - on 1st fret watch for open strings
Pos 3- 3rd fret G (4th)
pos 4- 5th fret A (5th)
Pos 5- 8th fret C (7th)