Improvisation.

Well... you're confusing range (the space between the highest and lowest notes) with key (the particular notes that 'fit').

There are two things that will help: first, learn the other pentatonic patterns. They interlock to cover the entire range of the guitar, so that will allow you to move up and down the fretboard without leaving the key.

Second, you have to understand that there are three things involved in improvising, and you've got to develop all three of them to do it well:

The first is the mechanics - where the notes are. Learning the scale patterns will help with that, as will learning other scales, chord voicings, etc. - the more you know how to play, the more you'll be able to do. Developing a range of techniques is a part of this.

The second is the mind. You need to be able to hear the melody you want before you can play it. Many (probably almost all) of us started by picking notes from the patterns we learned, and hoping they'd fit. Although that can give you interesting results sometimes, it's a lot more random than truly improvising a melody. Your mind creates the tune, your fingers execute it - if the fingers come first, you're leaving the results to chance.

The third is experience. I'm not talking about playing time; I'm talking about living in the experience of making music. You hear something in your head, and you try to play it... and it comes out wrong (compared to what you'd intended). You try it again, and you're active in your pursuit of what you hear in your head - if a note was too high compared to what you wanted, you try the phrase again with that note a fret or two lower. You continually adjust. With effort, what you hear becomes what you play. At that point, you're no longer noodling around on the guitar; you're using it as your voice, your instrument.

That's improvising.

There are two things that will help: first, learn the other pentatonic patterns. They interlock to cover the entire range of the guitar, so that will allow you to move up and down the fretboard without leaving the key.

How do uoy do that? How could u move across the fretboard without leaving the key? What other pentatonic patterns are there?

what is a pentatonic scale? examples of different scales are on some of the lessons but i still dont understand what purpose these scales have, is it just for improvising?

what is a pentatonic scale? examples of different scales are on some of the lessons but i still dont understand what purpose these scales have, is it just for improvising?

Firstly, a pentatonic( not only pentatonic) isnt a special type of scale or anything. Thats just the name for the type of sound you get when improvisin, or just playing the scales. Secondly scales aren't only for improvisation. They are also used as exersises. Hope it helps.

ta

The pentatonic scale consists of 5 notes. You can play these five notes in multiple octaves all over the fretboard. Start by learning the basic five boxes and you'll be playing all over the place in no time. Remember: it's easy to play all over the place, but hard to make it sound interesting!

Hope this made sense. If not, blame it on the green fairy....

that damn green fairy!! it gets everywhere! :lol:

I've been working on this too...

a cool thing to work in a getting your improve to sound like vocals...

Say you have a line from an elmore james song like:

"I'm goin' to the country, baby do you want to go"

See how the lick below mimicks the vocals...

I-----15b(17)-12------------12---------------------------I
I--12------------12-15b(17)------------------------------I
I-----------------------------------14br-p12----12-------I
I----------------------------------------------14----14----I
I------------------------------------------------------------I
I------------------------------------------------------------I

so try singing your improv. as you play...remember the best solos you can hum.

Firstly, a pentatonic( not only pentatonic) isnt a special type of scale or anything.

Uh... yeah it is. It's scale, and as Arjen noted, one with only 5 notes per octave. I typically think of pentatonics as the "power chord" of scales. Their lack of key distinguishing notes means you usually can play any note in the scale over a song and it will sound "right".

NoteBoat had a post a while back that really got into the nitty gritty scale construction and he explained this point much more clearly, but one of the important subpoints was that in order to avoid mistakes in a pentatonic run, all that was required is knowledge of the shapes, not necessarily of which note you were playing at the time. Of course, that's quite handy when you're starting off and don't yet have the fretboard down.

All scales in Western music (no, nothing to do with cowboys an Indians) are based on the chromatic scale, which has 12 notes:
A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#. You could replace each of the sharps (#) with a "b" attached to the note above it (e.g. F# is the same as Gb).

The "normal" scales have 7 notes, which fit together to create a certain type of feeling. The major scales produce a happy feeling, whereas the minor scales produce a sad feeling. Each scale has a fixed pattern of notes, within the chromatic scale, so you'll be playing 7 of the available 12 notes in a "normal" scale.
Someone defined the major scale (the basis for all other scales) as having two identical halves, separated by a whole tone. The halves were defined as having separations (intervals) of a whole-tone, a whole-tone and a semi-tone - WWH W WWH. From this pattern, it is possible to build any one of the twelve available major scales. All you do is to decide which will be the root note (the start of your "musical alphabet") and move along the chromatic scale. So, taking "C" as our root, we can move along two places (a whole tone, which is the same as two semi-tones), to "D". Moving further, we land on E, F, G - and now we've come almost to the end, what do we do? Simply start at the beginning again - so two positions further along from G is A, then B and we're back at the root note - C. (C, D, E, F, G, A, B)

To create a minor scale (there are other types of minor scale, but let's stay with this one for the moment), we have to lower the notes at the third, sixth and seventh positions (known as degrees - or more properly degrees of scale). OK, let's take the C scale again. Let's change the third - E - and lower it by a semi-tone. Doing this gives us Eb. The sixth is similar - A changes to Ab and B (the 7th) changes to Bb. (C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb)

The Pentatonic is a "short" version of the normal scale - you just leave out two of the notes (penta means 5). The major scale leaves the notes at the 4th and 7th positions (degrees, remember?) and the minor leaves out the notes and the 2nd and sixth degrees.

You may ask, why the two scales leave out different degrees. The reason is that every major scale a related minor scale, which also has the same notes, albeit starting at different places. The "relative minor" of the major scale always starts from the note found at the 6th degree of the major scale, so the relative minor of C is A (the 6th degree of C). The Aminor scale has the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G. If you look back, I said that the
the major scale leaves out the 4th and 7th degrees, so F and B. The minor leaves out the 2nd and 6th degrees, so looking at the Aminor scale we see that the 2nd and 6th are B and F - exactly the same notes that got left out of the relative major scale.

I need a beer, now. :lol:

Thanks for your explanation Grey Beard, it helped me understand pents.

Can someone answer my question too?

Greybeard's pages have the pentatonic scale patterns. You just end up playing in the same key in different places. You might want to spend some time learning the fretboard. And I should take my own advice :roll:

And I should take my own advice

I plead guilty to this too.

terminator,

Go here to see the five pentatonic patterns. They form a closed circle - the top half of the last pattern is also the bottom half of the first pattern, so no matter where you start, you can just on going up (or down) the neck ad nauseum.

What you are seeing is all of the notes in a particular key (in my case the Aminor) wherever they are to be found on the fretboard. They've just been cut up into bite sized chunks and labelled "boxes". It's a really wrong term, in my eyes, because boxes are separate entities - a new box can only start where the old one left off. The 5 patterns are overlapping, so make up a chain - an endless chain like on a bike.

If you look at my diagram, you'll see that the root (A) is marked as being on the low E string at the 5th fret - move the whole thing up the neck by two frets and you are playing in Bminor (the root is now on the low E at the 7th fret). Move it down the neck so that the root is on the low E at the 3rd fret and you are playing in Gminor.