Category: Beginner

Most beginner guitar players quickly become confident at improvising with the minor pentatonic scale in a minor key, but feel hopeless improvising over a major key! If this sounds like you, then you’re in luck because I have one simple trick that will allow you to play all of your favourite minor pentatonic licks over a major key! 🤫

Here’s the trick: instead of starting the minor pentatonic scale from the root note of C major chord, start it from the major 3rd – the E note! 👀

How To Play Minor Pentatonic Over Major Chords

Let’s assume the chord C major. Go ahead an drone a C major chord for you to play over. Now from the third degree of the C major key, E, play an E minor pentatonic scale. You’ll notice that this sounds quite tasteful!

In relation to the underlying chord, these notes outline the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th. These are all “colour” notes, and can be used to extend the sound of the underlying chord.

Improvising Over Multiple Chords

Let’s elaborate on this concept by playing a Cmaj7 followed by a Dbmaj7. Irrespective of key, you can treat the Dbmaj7 in exactly the same was at the Cmaj7:

• Play Em Pentatonic over Cmaj7 (E is the maj3 of C)
• Play Fm Pentatonic over Dbmaj7 (F is the maj3 of Db)

Now that you’re grasping the basics, let’s take it a step further with a more challenging progression: Cmaj7 – Ebmaj7 – Dm7 – Dbmaj7 (I – bIII – ii – bII)

In this example chord progression, you can use the following minor pentatonic scale shapes for each chord:

• Cmaj7 – E minor pentatonic
• Ebmaj7 – G minor pentatonic
• Dm7 – D minor pentatonic
• Dbmaj7 – F minor pentatonic

Notice that for each major chord, we began the minor pentatonic scale from the maj3 degree of that chord. For the minor chord, we can play the minor pentatonic scale from the root note of that chord.

This approach encourages you to think about the chord tones rather than relying solely on the parent scale.

Limit Your Movement

If you’re able to visualise the minor pentatonic scale across the whole neck, try to limit your movement as you improvise over the chords. Try to avoid jumping across the neck to play the same shape for every chord. It’s best to identify the corresponding minor pentatonic scales in one position of the neck, as bigger leaps across the fretboard can often sound jarring.

Join my Essential Theory For Guitarists Masterclass if you want to take a deeper dive into foundational music theory topics like intervals, how to construct scales and arpeggios, learn chord theory, and more!

Keep up the great practice, and stay curious! 🎉

Guitar lessons often focus on teaching triads, but it’s equally as important to know how to practice triads on guitar. Memorising triad shapes is just the beginning, but in this lesson we’ll build on a simple practice idea that you can incorporate in your daily routine.

This lesson assumes you’re already at least moderately familiar with how to visualise triads on guitar. If this is not something you’re yet confident with, I recommend enrolling in my CAGED Fretboard Visualisation Masterclass for a complete insight into how to visualise the guitar.

Let’s begin working through the steps!

#1: Determine The Chords & Key

Let’s start by selecting two major triads within a specific key. For example, we’ll choose the key of B and the B major triad as our starting point. To create a musical progression, we can select the B major and E major triads – the I and IV chords.

#2: Playing with a Steady Tempo

Set a steady tempo that works for you and play a B major triad on every quarter beat. Maintain this pace for four bars.

TOP TIP: If you find that you’re better at visualising triads vertically on guitar, and not so much horizontally, try to loop one or two triads for a few beats whilst you allow yourself to think and work out a different position of the neck. Once you can visualise triads in your target position of the neck, then take the leap! Horizontal movement can be slow to begin with, but in time when your ability to visualise the guitar strengthens, you’ll become much faster.

Now after 4 bars of E major, move on to to the next chord (B major) for the next 4 bars and play B major triads on every quarter beat.

Rinse & repeat!

#3: Adding Chords & Increasing Difficulty

To add complexity, we can add chords to the progression. To allow yourself to focus on major triads, adding a V chord to the progression would be the smartest decision.

For now, don’t add any other triad types to your progression such as minor triads. We’ll come back to that later once you can be sure you master the major triads.

You may also decide to speed up the progression if you find it to be too easy or slow. Instead of playing 4 bars of each chord, you could play just two bars. If you’re feeling confident with your rhythm, then perhaps you can introduce some eighth notes instead, or off-beat rhythms.

Just don’t run before you can walk!

#4: Minor Triad Variation

Now that you’ve got a good grasp of how major triads look and feel across the neck, it’s time to regress back to step #1 again but now with minor triads. Begin with a i iv progression, Bm to Em.

The goal is to focus on one type of triad during a practice session to maintain clarity and progress.

#5: Putting It All Together

After you’ve become confident with both major and minor triads across the neck, it’s time to blend them together! If you’ve done sufficient preparation, this shouldn’t be too difficult to improvise your way through.

Major and minor triads are the most important triad types to familiarise yourself with. Down the road, you can begin to expand your chord vocabulary with diminished, suspended, and even augmented triads. I would advise that you stick with major and minor for a long while though, as these are the most practical and useful.

Embrace the learning process and enjoy the journey 💜

If you want to deep dive further and not only learn other ways on how to practice triads effectively, but also how to apply them in your music and improvisation, you absolutely don’t want to miss out on my All About Triads Masterclass here on Fretwise! 😉

Are you learning how to visualise triads on guitar, but struggling to see how they fit together across the fretboard? Let me show you the easiest way to visualise triads across the guitar neck!

Just like most of us, I first learned triads from a YouTube video. The teacher even provided accompanying PDF diagrams! For weeks thereafter I practiced them up and down the neck, hoping that eventually I would retain the muscle memory to recall all of the triads with ease. However this goal proved to be unobtainable, as it was too difficult to memorise much more than 10% of the shapes 😓

Years later however, I discovered a much easier method that I use to visualising triads (and, well – everything!) across the guitar neck: The CAGED System.

The CAGED System

If you are unfamiliar with The CAGED System, it consists of five positions or chord shapes that are movable positions across the guitar neck. These positions are based on simple open chords:

C, A, G, E, and D.

Let’s begin exploring what a D chord looks like by identifying the five CAGED positions on the neck. Take note of how each position fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, and pay close attention to the root notes within each shape:

How To Visualise Triads

Now here’s the trick. Instead of memorising every individual triad position as its own, it’s far easier to think of them as subsets of their parent CAGED position!

For example, if you focus on just the bottom 3 strings, whilst keeping the parent shapes from above in mind, these are the note groupings you would practice:

Then once you can visualise these clearly, respective of their parent CAGED position, you can move on to do the same for every other string set!

Summary

Everything I’ve covered in this writeup is relative to the key of D major. In the attached video I also go through examples in C major.

If you want a more comprehensive understanding of The CAGED System including how to practice triads in every key, including minor keys, then take a look at my CAGED Fretboard Visualisation Masterclass! The methods I teach in this course have revolutionised my outlook of the guitar 🤯

By utilising The CAGED System properly, you’ll be able to effortlessly and quickly recall triads during your practice within no time!

Have you ever wondered what the distinction between sharp and flat notes is, and when it’s more appropriate to use – for instance, a Db instead of a C#? They’re the same note right, so why does it matter?

With my demonstrations in the video above, I will help you grasp the contexts in which you should use either a sharp or flat note.

Example 1: Common Practice

If we were to put together an F major scale, would it be:

• F, G, A, A#, C, D, E; or
• F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E

When the full scale is written out, it might already seem clear to you which one is the correct answer. The second option uses all letters of the musical alphabet, whereas the first skips a letter which goes against common practice.

Example 2: Theoretical Notes

This rule also applies when a note only theoretically exists. Consider for example the D# harmonic minor scale, which is built from the intervals: 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, 7.

Take note that this is a natural minor scale, but instead with a sharpened 7th degree.

This would be an incorrect interpretation:

• D#, F, F#, G#, A#, B, D.

Instead, we would do this:

• D#, E#, F#, G#, A#, B, C##.

Notice that E# is a theoretical note, and while C## is technically the same as D, we can’t skip a letter in heptatonic scales.

Summary

The confusion on whether a note is sharp or flat usually comes from a scenario with no context. If you select a random note on the fretboard, it could for example be either D# or Eb. Without context, it’s unclear. So be sure to understand the context of the music if you’re in doubt!