Ukulele Scales: Minor Pentatonic
July 2, 2008
This week, I thought I’d go over the easiest scale around. It only has five notes in – as the ancient Romans amongst you will have already worked out. It’s also used almost exclusively in blues and rock music.
C Minor Pentatonic
The C minor pentatonic looks like this on the fretboard:
This in tab:
And sounds like this:
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The minor pentatonic is a great scale to improvise with – particularly with bluesy songs. Here’s me playing around with the notes in this pattern.
C Minor Pentatonic Improvisation (MP3)
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The end lick in that is easy to play and very effective. Here’s the tab of it:
D Minor Pentatonic
As with the major scale, the minor pentatonic pattern can be moved up the neck to fit with whichever key you’re playing in. Find the root note on the C string and start the pattern from there. For example, if you’re playing in the key of D minor, start the pattern on the second fret so it looks like this on the fretboard:
And this in tab:
F Minor Pentatonic
Similarly for F minor, you start on the fifth fret of the C string like this:
And this:
If you can get this scale under your fingers, next week’s scale – the blues scale – will be a doddle.
If you want to learn more stuff you can do with this scale, check out my Blues Ukulele ebook.
