Minor Pentatonic Mini Positions

One of the things that makes this scale a great one for improvisation is that you can play in 3 octaves, using exactly the same fingering for each octave. Think of these as minor pentatonic "mini positions".

Start by becoming comfortable with the 5 note shape that is common in all 3 octaves. If you can improvise in these "mini positions", you are going to acquaint your ear to this fingering much sooner than if you thought of this as one big scale. After that you can work on connecting those "mini positions. Be sure to learn the root of the scale (red notes). This is very important to learning to correctly use this scale. You may want to end your phrases on the root to start with. Ending on the root will always sound good, while ending on other notes may or may not sound good depending on the situation. The root is your anchor.

5 note mini position

Of course knowing the names of the notes on the neck is very important to being able to effectively improvise. If you don't know that the 2nd string, 10th fret is an A, then you will not be able jump to that mini position and improvise. To often guitar players know the names of the notes on the 5th and 6th string, and know where to start the scale. But they have to go through the whole scale in order to get to the higher strings. Therefore their solos are predictable, starting on the 6th string, and moving to the 1st.

Page 2, comparing the 2 minor pentatonic forms

Page 4, some examples

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