Zarlino

E minor pentatonic

Natural minor, stripped to its strongest notes.

Drop F♯ and C from E minor and you have it: E G A B D. 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 2 to 5
  • High E string: G at fret 3, A at fret 5
  • B string: D at fret 3, E at fret 5
  • G string: A at fret 2, B at fret 4
  • D string: E at fret 2, G at fret 5
  • A string: B at fret 2, D at fret 5
  • Low E string: G at fret 3, A at fret 5

The notes

In order, with the frets between them: E3G2A2B3D2E

Two kinds of step: two frets, and three where the scale skips a note (E up to G, B up to D). 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. D sits two frets below.

E

Perfect unison

Three frets up from E: minor third.

G

Minor third

Two frets up from G: whole step.

A

Perfect fourth

Two frets up from A: whole step.

B

Perfect fifth

Three frets up from B: minor third.

D

Minor seventh

Playing E minor pentatonic

  • All six open strings.

    Every open string is in the scale, so the box at the nut needs no fretted root anywhere. No scale shape sits more naturally on the guitar.

  • Where riffs come from.

    Open low E, a note at the 3rd fret, back to the open string. A huge share of rock riffs are built from exactly that corner of this shape.

  • Again at the 12th.

    The same shape repeats an octave up at the 12th fret. Same fingering, same notes, higher.

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: E minor.

    Over Em or Em7 every note fits, and it carries straight through minor progressions like Em – C – D.

  • Over E7: the blues.

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

  • Over a whole blues in E.

    The same five notes hold up over E7, A7 and B7, so one shape can cover a whole twelve-bar.

  • Over power chords.

    E5 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 E natural minor, the full scale it comes from: Em, F♯dim, G, Am, Bm, C and D.

The chords of E natural minor

The family

Relative majorG Major Pentatonic