Minor Pentatonic Substitution Guitar Lesson

Do you think that the minor pentatonic scale just sounds a bit cliched? If so, then try this fantastic technique for reusing the minor Pentatonic scales getting some more interesting and complex sounds. This technique is known as Pentatonic Substitution.

This is the next video in a series that is really digging in to the Pentatonic scales which includes:

• going from how a beginner would learn both the major and minor pentatonic

• Into how an intermediate player would be able to mix major and minor in Blues

• And now how to become a more advanced player by learning about Pentatonic substitution

This lesson teaches:

• what is Pentatonic substitution?

• How to apply it?

• It teaches a specific example

WHAT IS PENTATONIC SUBSTITUTION?

Put simply, it is using the pentatonic scale from a different key. So, our example is A minor, so we’d usually use A minor Pentatonic to play over it. And there’s nothing wrong with this, in fact that’s exactly what we did in the first video in this series. However, some players find that might make them sound a little generic and just playing the same as everyone else. Also, after you have been playing a while, you might find that you are bored with the regular old Pentatonic scale and you want to spice it up a little. 

So, how do we do this? Well the rule for minor substitution, is that you you can use the minor pentatonic scale that is 5 notes away from your root. So in our example we are in the key of A, so our root is A. Now if we count 5 notes away we get E minor. This means we can play E minor pentatonic scale over an A minor chord progression.

There’s many ways you can apply this to your playing. Thinking about our backing track in A minor, we could:

  1. Play in Em for the whole solo

  2. Play part of the solo in A minor and then part of the solo in E minor 

  3. Play mostly in A minor, and occasionally through in an E minor lick in order to spice things up

  4. Continually alternate between A minor and E minor

  5. Start a lick in A minor and end it using the notes from E minor in order to create almost a hybrid scale of the two Pentatonics

So why does this work?

Music theory

Ok, so here's the theory to explain what's going on any why it works. Let's look at the notes of both scales:

A minor Pent: A C D E G = 1 b3 4 5 b7
E minor Pent: A B D E G = 1 2 4 5 b7

So, we've just replaced the C(flat 3rd) with a B(2nd), and B is in the key of A natural Minor (A B C D E F G) so the B note is not going to sound out of place at all.

Also, when 'thinking' E minor, we are more likely to resolve to E, rather than A. However, E is still going to sound really strong, but just not A which your ear is really used to hear.

However, whether we care for the theory or not, the fact is that the fingering shapes will feel really familiar, however the notes will all just feel a little unusual due to the change in sound. The best thing to do is put on the backing track and jam over with E minor.