2-3 Minor Pentatonic Scale Patterns

Learning scales is pretty essential when it comes to lead playing, especially for improvisation.  One of the first scale you're likely to learn is the minor pentatonic.  There are five two-note-per-string boxes that you can learn, but most of us get stuck in the good ol' position 1 box (or, what I like the call the E-shape minor pentatonic as it can be thought of as being built around an E-shape minor barre chord).

A minor pentatonic scale (position 1 / E-shape)

A minor pentatonic scale (position 1 / E-shape)

In the lesson video below I'll show you one approach to breaking out of this pentatonic box to get you moving up and down the fretboard without needing to learn all 5 boxes.  All you need to know is one pattern that can be easily moved up and down the neck.  The pattern consists of 2 notes on one string and then 3 notes on the adjacent string, hence the '2-3' name.  Finger 1 has to be placed on the b7 (2 frets below the root note) and you have a nice 5 note pattern that you can easily slide up and down within and quickly move to the other string pairs.

The 2-3 minor pentatonic pattern

The 2-3 minor pentatonic pattern

The TAB for the lesson can be downloaded by clicking HERE.  The full scale patterns can be found below and clicking on the image will open up a free .pdf to download.