Zarlino

A minor pentatonic

Natural minor, stripped to its strongest notes.

Drop B and F from A minor and you have it: A C D E G. Those two are the key’s tritone, the only unstable pair in natural minor.

What’s left is five notes with nothing leaning and nothing a single fret apart. Solid enough to hit hard, with space around every note.

How it sounds
Raw and bluesy. It keeps minor’s flat third and flat seventh but none of its half steps, so it comes across as tough more than sad.
Where it lives
Blues, rock, funk, soul, hard rock and metal riffs. It’s the default language of the electric guitar solo.

On the neck

Position
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Position 1, frets 0 to 3
  • High E string: E at fret 0, G at fret 3
  • B string: C at fret 1, D at fret 3
  • G string: G at fret 0, A at fret 2
  • D string: D at fret 0, E at fret 2
  • A string: A at fret 0, C at fret 3
  • Low E string: E at fret 0, G at fret 3

The notes

In order, with the frets between them: A3C2D2E3G2A

Two kinds of step: two frets, and three where the scale skips a note (A up to C, E up to G). No two notes sit a single fret apart, so nothing softens the line. It comes out bold.

What each interval does

Home. Every other note is measured from it. G sits two frets below.

A

Perfect unison

Three frets up from A: minor third.

C

Minor third

Two frets up from C: whole step.

D

Perfect fourth

Two frets up from D: whole step.

E

Perfect fifth

Three frets up from E: minor third.

G

Minor seventh

Playing A minor pentatonic

  • The box everyone starts with.

    Root at the 5th fret of the low E. It’s the shape nearly every guitar teacher reaches for first.

  • Five open strings.

    Everything except B belongs, so there’s an open-position version too, rooted on the open A string.

  • Where you’ll meet it.

    Blues and classic rock. A is one of the two home keys of the blues, and this box is where the solo usually starts.

What to play it over

Five notes aren’t enough to build a full set of chords, so the useful question is what this scale sounds good over. For minor pentatonic, the answer is almost everything in rock and blues.

  • Home: A minor.

    Over Am or Am7 every note fits, and it carries straight through minor progressions like Am – F – G.

  • Over A7: the blues.

    Played over a dominant chord, its C rubs against the chord’s C♯. That clash is on purpose. It’s the sound of the blues.

  • Over a whole blues in A.

    The same five notes hold up over A7, D7 and E7, so one shape can cover a whole twelve-bar.

  • Over power chords.

    A5 has no third, so there’s nothing for the scale to clash with. That’s a big part of why minor pentatonic runs through so many rock riffs.

Want the chords that work with this scale? They’re the seven chords of A natural minor, the full scale it comes from: Am, Bdim, C, Dm, Em, F and G.

The chords of A natural minor

The family

Relative majorC Major Pentatonic