Connecting 5 Shapes of E Minor Pentatonic

In this lesson we're going to look at how we can use the octaves of E to navigate the 5 shapes of the E Minor Pentatonic scale. This lets us move through the different shapes of the scale and helps us to avoid staying in one position all the time.

Key points

• The two open E strings and the 12th fret on both strings provide 4 octaves of E
• Try playing licks you know in different positions on the neck to get a feel for how we can navigate the fretboard using different octaves

Octaves of E

Here we can see all the octaves of E in the lower part of the guitar neck. This pattern repeats in the upper part of the neck, with the 12th fret being equivalent the open strings.

E Minor Pentatonic - The 5 Shapes

Blue = Shape 1 | Red = Shape 2 | Pink = Shape 3 | Yellow = Shape 4 | Green = Shape 5