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Hey Hugh, thanks for watching my lessons. Glad to hear from someone in the triad area, I was born and raised in Greensboro and lived there until I was 25. In fact, I was just at Bowman Gray stadium this summer catching some races with my Dad.

To answer your question about minor pentatonics you will see that most of my scale lessons revolve around the major pentatonic and major scales. The minor pentatonic is the exact same scale as the major pentatonic, it is just the relative minor of the major pentatonic scale.

In my theory lesson on “Understanding Minor Scales” I talk about relating all minor scales to their relative major and then just visualizing them as major. The reason for this is to have consistency in how you visualize scales across the neck. If we had different patterns for all scale types we can play on the guitar things can get quite confusing. So instead what I choose to do is relate every scale back to its parent major scale when dealing with modes, and its relative major scale when dealing with minor pentatonic scales. That way, I only have to visualize one scale type no matter how many scales I am playing.

Hope this makes since, in order to do this visualization method you just need a solid grasp of the music theory behind it. If you check out the music theory section of the Lesson Archives page you can read a lot of tutorials that explain this type of thinking. Then you can just watch the visualizing major scales, and modes lessons after that to apply that theory.

Good Luck!! Carl

There it is….didn’t see this before I commented on the last one

Awesome info, Thanks!

Hallo, Carl. Thank you so much for your lessons. They are very very helpful.
I got a question on how do you count the notes in your head. For example you want to find the 6th note of G major. Do you spell the letters in your head and then apply it to guitar or do you visualize the guitar fret board and that gives you the answer?

Yuriy
Germany