This might be old news to you folks, but maybe someone will benefit from a thought that came to me
For some time now, I’ve been working on using pentatonics to do little lead fills in blues and most popular songs. Once I determine the key of the song, the corresponding pentatonic scale almost always works fine.
I have been comfortable in boxes 1, 2, and 3. However, for whatever reason, box 4 eludes me. I work on learning it, and the pattern is gone from my mind the next day. It just isn’t intuitive for me.
Then I looked at box 5, found it to be a really easy pattern to get “under my fingers.” Suddenly I realized that I didn’t have to think of it in terms of going up from box 4, but could think of it going down from box 1. I now have connected a pretty big chunk of the fret board by thinking of 5 1 2 3. It’s especially useful in keys where boxes 2 and 3 are already high up on the neck, and box 5 on the headstock end is more pleasant than the really high and squeaky sound of box 5 toward the bridge.
I hope this makes sense.