View the full lesson at Linking Patterns: Licks & Concepts | JustinGuitar
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.
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Yep, I’d have to agree. I find the 5-1-etc a nice area. Falls under the fingers well for me.
As an extension to this, Pattern 5 Major pentatonic ( G shape) is an exact mirror of Pattern 1 minor (Em shape), so this is also a great area of the fretboard to start learning to mix major and minor pentatonics.
Cheers, Shane
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Break on through to the other side! 
-Mr. Mojo Risin’
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Pattern 4 can be a little bit like that for many people.
One perspective that may help in a broad sense is to recognise the similarity with pattern 1.
Pattern 1 starts with a root note on the 6th string.
For pattern 4, if you ignore the 6th string, there is a corresponding start you can make with the root note on the 5th string.
then the two patterns follow an identical path.
BUT - you need to take account of the tuning of the 2nd string and offset its notes by one fret.
In the diagram below I have deleted the 6th string from pattern 4. Hopefully you can see how the notes within each yellow box match up.
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Good insight there Shane. I’d seen the potential interplay between pattern 5 and 1 in minor pentatonic but hadn’t thought about the major pentatonic relationship (just not there yet) and how it might fit. When I get to that point, I’ll have a fiddle with this. Cheers.
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It’s strange how you can be blind to what Richard has just highlighted. Even though I am playing pattern 4 with ease now I didn’t take the time to inspect it and look at it the way I am now, so it is no wonder my fingers must have found it familiar without my brain thinking about it too much. This I think leads me to start and think more in detail about what I am doing I’m looking at Richards’s post and just thinking how did I not see that wow, age maybe thanks HEC
Brilliant illustration!
When I look at pattern 1, there are two different 1 octave string patterns.
Patterns 2, 3 & 4 only have one full octave. This octave will be one or the other of the string patterns in pattern 1
The pattern on the strings either side of the octave are from the other pattern.
Pattern 5 also has two full octaves. The octave patterns are the opposite of pattern 1
Allowances have to be made for that darn B string that we keep making excuses for!
The same principles also apply to the major scale patterns.
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