The minor pentatonic on guitar: five positions across the whole neck

The minor pentatonic is the scale you hear most on a guitar. Rock solos are built out of it for long stretches, blues almost entirely, and a good deal of what sounds like guitar in pop melodies comes from these five notes. Two notes per string, one hand position, and over a matching backing nearly every note lands well.

This article covers it in full: all five positions with fret numbers and fingering, the rule that ties them together, moving them into other keys, and a practice routine that turns them into melodies rather than runs. The key throughout is A minor, because there position 1 sits at the fifth fret. Comfortable to reach, and the starting point almost every guitar method has settled on.

The five notes

The minor pentatonic is built from the root, the minor third, the fourth, the fifth and the minor seventh. In A minor: A, C, D, E and G.

Degree	Note in A minor	Interval	Frets above the root
1	A	root	0
♭3	C	minor third	3
4	D	fourth	5
5	E	fifth	7
♭7	G	minor seventh	10

From one note to the next that is three, two, two, three and two frets. This 3-2-2-3-2 step pattern is the entire scale. Everything else in this article is the question of where it falls on the fretboard.

It comes from natural minor with two notes missing: the second and the sixth degree, which in A minor are B and F. Those two are not an arbitrary choice. Both sit a semitone away from a chord tone: B a semitone below the C, F a semitone above the E. And along with the A, C and E are precisely the notes an A minor chord is made of. A semitone next to a sounding chord tone is the friction people hear as a wrong note. Take both out and what remains is a scale in which that friction no longer occurs.

Hence the pentatonic being so dependable over a rock or blues backing, and hence the honest limitation that comes with it. It does not sound good because it can do more, but because it is missing the two notes you could get wrong. That does not make it a beginner’s version. It is a selection professionals make for the same reason.

Position 1: the shape to start with

The root A sits on the low E string at the fifth fret, a second one on the D string at the seventh and a third on the high E string at the fifth. The index finger covers the whole fifth fret and stays put. On the A, D and G strings the ring finger adds the seventh; on both E strings and the B string the little finger takes the eighth. The hand never shifts.

Start here, and genuinely only here. This one shape played over a backing in A minor sounds like music straight away, and it covers four frets in which a complete solo fits. The other four positions extend the range. They do not replace anything.

How the other four attach to it

Before the remaining shapes, here is the rule that holds them together. It saves you from memorising four more pictures:

Every position shares exactly one note per string with its neighbour. The upper note of the lower position is the lower note of the next one up.

On the low E string, position 1 has a C at the eighth fret. That same C is the lowest note of position 2. On the A string, position 1 ends on the E at the seventh fret, and that is precisely where position 2 begins. This holds on all six strings and between all five positions. Learn one position and you already have one note per string of the next.

In practice that means you never learn a new position, only the way out of one you already know. And since everything repeats after five positions, position 5 leads back into position 1, twelve frets higher.

Position 2: frets 7 to 10

The reaches get a little wider here. On the A and D strings the two notes are three frets apart, index and little finger, and two frets apart on the other four. The roots no longer sit at the edge of the shape but in the middle of it, on the D string at the seventh fret and on the B string at the tenth. Which makes position 2 the most useful one after position 1. The target note is where the melody already is, rather than at the extremes.

Position 3: frets 9 to 13

Position 3 is the least comfortable of the five, and two single notes are the reason. Four strings sit tidily at the tenth and twelfth frets, but the E on the G string drops to the ninth and the C on the B string moves up to the thirteenth. That makes the position five frets wide instead of four, and the hand has to stretch once.

The cause is the same as for every irregularity on the fretboard: the tuning step between the G and B strings, the only one that is a major third rather than a fourth. Knowing that, you stop looking for the fault in your own hand.

Position 4: frets 12 to 15

Plenty of players know this position without knowing it. Move it down twelve frets and you land on the open strings: low E open and 3rd fret, A open and 3rd, D open and 2nd, G open and 2nd, B 1st and 3rd, high E open and 3rd. The same shape, note for note. If you learned the A minor pentatonic in open position, you already have position 4 and only need to recognise it twelve frets up.

Position 5: frets 14 to 17

The root sits on both E strings at the seventeenth fret. On the D and G strings the reaches are three frets, which in this part of the neck are physically closer together than further down and so come easier than the diagram makes them look. Past position 5, position 1 begins again.

All five on one neck

This picture is not there to be memorised. It answers two questions the individual positions cannot. First: where are the roots? On the low and high E strings at the fifth and seventeenth frets, on the A string open and at the twelfth, on the D string at the seventh, on the G string at the second and fourteenth, on the B string at the tenth. Those ten places are the target notes of every solo.

Second: from the twelfth fret the whole neck repeats. Whatever you learn in the first twelve frets you also know up there. The neck is not twice as much material. It is the same amount.

The same shape in every key

Because all frets are the same size, each of these five shapes moves. The root of position 1 sits on the low E string. Put it on a different fret and you are playing the same shape in a different key, without learning a single new note.

Key	Position 1 starts at	Position 1 reaches to
E minor	fret 0 (open) or 12	3 or 15
G minor	fret 3	6
A minor	fret 5	8
C minor	fret 8	11
D minor	fret 10	13

The same thing holds fret by fret for every other key; the full table of roots on the low E and A strings is in the scales overview. E minor is the second case most players pick up, because it works both with open strings and at the twelfth fret and turns up constantly in rock songs.

Major pentatonic: same shapes, different target

The major pentatonic needs no new shapes. It contains the same five notes as the minor pentatonic of its relative key, and only the root is a different one. Read A, C, D, E, G as C, D, E, G, A and you have the C major pentatonic.

Compare it with position 1: the same box, the same twelve points. What has moved are the three red markings. The target note is now C, on the low E string at the eighth fret, on the G string at the fifth and on the high E string at the eighth.

From that comes the rule for practice: the root of the major pentatonic sits three frets above the root of the minor pentatonic that shares its shapes. To play over a backing in G major, take the E minor pentatonic, whose root is three frets below the G, and aim at the G notes. There is no more difference than that, and it happens in your head rather than in your hands.

How to practise it

Take one position at a time, and genuinely one at a time. The criterion for “I have it” is not a date but five clean runs at eighth notes at target tempo. Only then does the next one join.

A routine for a new position:

1. Quarter notes at 60 bpm, up and down, until five clean runs stand back to back. On a slip you restart the count, not the tempo.
2. Eighth notes at 60 bpm, then up in steps of 5 bpm. At the first slip, one step back.
3. Say the root out loud every time you hit one. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the difference between a finger pattern and a scale.
4. Groups of six instead of up and down, once the eighths are secure. Two notes per string means three strings make a group of six, the grouping this scale falls into most naturally.

Once two positions stand, add the exercise that turns five pictures into one scale: one position up, the next one down. The switch happens on the shared note that both positions have on every string. From position 1 into position 2 on the low E string that is the C at the eighth fret. Play position 1 up to the high E string, change into position 2 there and come back down on it. Five minutes of that beat half an hour of separate positions.

Four things that make the pentatonic sound dull

1. Starting all five positions at once. Five half-learned shapes make no solo. One secure one does.
2. Always beginning at the bottom and stopping at the top. If you only know a position from its lowest note, you never find your way into it mid-solo. Start runs on the root in the middle and on the highest note.
3. Not tracking the root. The same five notes are A minor or C major depending on what you aim at. Without that, you play the same thing over both backings and wonder why it only fits one.
4. Everything in even note values. The pentatonic has five notes; what turns it into music is rhythm. Leave notes out, hold one, put a rest in. A lick of four notes and a rest beats sixteen straight eighths.

What comes next

The next step is a small one. The blues scale is this scale plus a single note, the flat fifth, which in A minor is E flat. The same five positions, two extra grid points in each. Where that note sits and why it works as a passing tone is in the scales overview, which also covers when natural minor is the better choice than the pentatonic.

Why the five positions sit exactly where they do is answered by the CAGED system, which the tutorial on the fretboard module covers. Anyone who would sooner switch between the positions than compare them will find both views stacked in the SMART FRET fretboard module. The full list of what it does is in the feature overview.