The 1st pull off (on the high e string) occurs on the beat. If you count from the start of the pattern, it’s on beat 3 (of the 2nd measure).
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I find it useful to also utilise songs that incorporate some of the techniques that I am trying to learn. One of my favourite tabs for hammer on / pull off practice is the intro riff in Nirvanas’s The Man Who Sold the World, but there are many others to choose from. When I listen to the song I know what it should sound like and the rhythm to use. Then I know when I get it right.
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Omg it is so hard during the struming of that song. Ok I have a solid reason reach for this amazing song. I have been working the single string and it sounds so cool. I cheaked out Justins lesson as well. With the pinky whew. I will get there. 
I will keep working these riffs into suplements for this lesson for sure. Thank you Dave for this tip from my all time favorite band.
I am trying to have fun with this and experiment…
What would be your suggested chord progression to play in the background (with a looper pedal) while doing combinations from this scale?
Does anybody here use a minor scale pattern (let’s say Am), that adds:
6th fret on A
8th fret on G
I read in an older guitar book that this was the “blues” guitar scale, but as I progress, it seems that no one uses a scale pattern like this.
I’d appreciate any help! 
When added to the minor pentatonic scale in the Key of A, these notes are the 5b, which is known as the Blue Note and yes with those notes added you get the Blues scale. Uses it sparingly as it is a passing note ie does not sound good if you stay on it too long or end a lick on it.
You can look at the 5b as a colour note that spices up the minor pentatonic scale, as would the 6th and 9th scale degrees.
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Thanks man! Helps a lot!
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I’ve practiced this exercise for weeks on electric with an amp. I just started trying it on acoustic and it is insane how much harder it is
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Should the fretting hand move up and down as the scale is played? As in, when moving from the 6th string to the 5th, the 4th, and so on, should the fretting hand move towards the floor as well, or should it stay put regardless of which string is being fretted?
I find the flick offs very difficult. I manage the hammer on techique pretty well but the flick offs are so difficult for me. Even on an electric guitar I can barely hear the string which was pulled off.
Hey Rafael,
They are going take some time mate. Be kind to yourself.
Pulloffs are much more of an ‘unnatural’ thing to do, than hammer ons.
Just keep at it with the right technique, and they’ll most likely improve incrementally over an extended period of time
All the best.
Cheers, Shabe
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Hi Shabe,
Thanks for the support. I´m trying man, I´m trying. But it drives me nuts that the flick offs are so difficult for me and it takes so long to play them properly.
I think maybe you should try it way slower and slowly build up speed. Eventually you’ll be able to do it fine.
Using the third finger stretch for the lower part of the scales doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe it depends on a persons hand shape and length of fingers etc, but for me I find it much easier to use my pinky. On the low E string I can bend the string just as easily using my pinky. I just use the other fingers to help with the bend. It feels totally natural to me. If I try stretching my 3rd finger, it feels totally unnatural and much harder.
I have noticed that some guitarists never seem to use their pinky at all, and just use their first three fingers. I think Eric Clapton does that. In fact, a lot of the guitarists from that era also do that. I don’t think Hendrix uses his pinky either. Just because Clapton and Hendrix are legends, it doesn’t mean everything they did was correct. It was just their own style that worked for them. Personally, I think that was just a bad habit that they learned when they were kids, when they were first learning guitar, and the habit just stuck. If you can use your pinky I think that is the correct way to go. There is less movement of fingers, so from a pure physics and common sense approach it seems like a no brainer that it’s much more efficient to use your pinky. As far as angled fingers goes, I find that all of my fingers, including the pinky, are angled by the time I get down to the lower strings. I just move my thumb a bit higher up towards the frets, and that happens naturally.
Does anyone else find the it easier using your pinky, or is it just me? This is all new to me anway, so I am speaking with very little knowledge and experience. I am just trying to explain how it feels for me. Like I mentioned, it might depend on a person’s anatomy, with the shape of their hands and length of fingers etc, which are a personal thing.
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A good insight Mark, into how different people find these movements as they are exposed to them. The pinky is an odd little creature for most at first.
It is a personal thing to a large extent though; no right or wrong.
Sometimes, ,depending on context, the third finger is utilised in order to free up the pinky for additional notes, embellishments, positional shifts etc.
The important thing I think is to build as much finger independence as possible, given ones anatomy; so that whatever the context, you’ll have the necessary dexterity and coordination available to get the job done. All the best.
Cheers, Shane.
Hey @MarkAD, I’ve thought about this a bit, too.
First of all, you are talking about the upper part of the scales and the high E string. “High” and “low” always refer to the pitch and not the physical location of the strings.
What makes you think that?
For most people the pinky is a much worse “performer” than the ring finger. It’s not as strong, not as dextrous and not as independent of the other fingers. On the plus side, it can reach further than the ring finger and simplifies the movements. So, deciding which to use is a question of evaluating these trade-offs.
Clapton and Hendrix eschewed the pinky because their blues-influenced playing involved a lot of string bending. I would say the vast majority of blues players don’t use the pinky much. You are lucky if you can string bend with your pinky was well as with your ring finger, I think most people can’t. In Justin’s string bending lessons he teaches bending with the ring finger and not with the pinky. I don’t think that was a bad habit that he got into while first learning guitar 
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I agree with John.
Justin covers here legato pentatonics and he plays it throughout the lesson with his pinkie. You should do this as well. Having an independent pinkie is a great asset as Shane mentioned as well.
However, Justin just introduces here an alternative way to play pattern 1 pentatonic scale on B and high E (using ring finger instead of pinkie) and he explains the reason clearly. If you are going to bend strings, you want to do this with ring finger, not pinkie, and since those notes (G and C in Am pentatonic) are great for bending in blues/R&R context, it makes sense to use ring finger. Although there are people who bend with pinkie, they are extreeme exceptions. So, you could argue that there is a proper approach here, the one that virtually every player follows when it comes to bending.
I would love to see and hear a short video of you bending with pinkie. That is incredibly difficult technique, especially in controlling properly bends at the top. If you are doing it properly, hats off you. If you only just tried it a few times in context of this lesson, my advice would be to wait until you reach the lesson on bending, then make an infromative decision on your bending approach. 
I felt the same way, it was definitely easier playing it with pinkie than ring. However, now it feels same or similar, after practicing licks with a lot of bending, it feels I can comfortably make that stretch. The point is that you don’t have to use one of other, you can use both based on the context of what you play.
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Hi Shane, many thanks for taking your time to repond to my comments and questions. I really appreciate it.
Hi John, thank you taking your time to respond to my comments. It takes time to post comments on here, so I really appreciate you sharing your advice.
Thanks for correcting my noob mistake about the designation of the strings. I must have been making the same mistake for years!
About the pinky versus ring finger. I get the point about string bending. For most people it would seem like bending with the third finger is the way to go. However, when it comes to playing scales and any solo that does not require bends, I still think it is bad practice to play scales using only the first 3 fingers. That was mainly what I was referring to when I suggested that Clapton etc learned a bad habit when they were kids. I still believe that. Clapton is obviously a genius, we all know that, but he was self taught and he quite likely does a few things that would be considered non-standard practice. Never using a pinky during solos, ever, cannot possibly be considered good practice. In a lot of cases that would result in the fingers moving further than they really need to, slowing down the overall movement. If you look at some of the more technical modern shreaders, like Eddie Van Halen for example, they use their pinky all the time during solos.
Hi Boris,
Many thanks for reponding to my comments and offering your advice. I really appreciate it. At the end of the day I’m here to learn how to play guitar, and for learning to play online I think this website is the best place there is.
When it comes to bending strings, I’m not really using just my pinky. I couldn’t possibly do the bend using just my pinky. I keep all four fingers on the string and use as many fingers as possible to do the bend. I think it boils down to using mainly the pinky and the ring finger, together, and maybe the 2nd finger too to some extent. So, most of the strength and control comes from the other fingers. It’s just that I keep all four fingers in their correct/defaul positions and I don’t stretch any of the fingers from one fret to another.
To give you an example, let’s say I wanted to bend the high E string on the 8th fret, which is the last note, C, in the Am pentatonic scale. To do that I place all four fingers on the string, 1st finger on fret 5, 2nd finger on fret 6, 3rd finger on fret 7, and pinky on fret 8. I keep my fingers in those original positions and bend the string using all of the fingers. I find that easier than stretching my ring finger over to the 8th fret and using that finger instead. In practice, I think most of the strength and control comes from the ring finger, but all I can say is that is feels quite easy to me. I can control the pitch just as easily as I can using my ring finger.
At the end of the day I guess the most important thing is not really the bend itself, but what note comes after the bend. In come cases it might be better to use the method I have described, where the pinky is involved, and in other cases it might make more sense to use the ring finger. So, as Shane mentioned, it’s all about context. But, using the ring finger exclusively, like Clapton does, is not necessarily the best approach. I’m not going to blindly copy what Clapton does, just because he was considered “god” back in the 60s. Guitar playing has moved on a bit since his day.
I appreciate your advice about Justin’s string bending course though. I will definitely try that first, before deciding fully. I will try both methods and see how it goes.