 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with musicteacher.com and in this video I'm going to show you a really simple method to unlock the major pentatonic scale. All the tones in this video that you hear are coming from the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 which is mic'd up with a Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser mic. So the major pentatonic is one of those pentatonic scales that does worry a lot of new players especially people who are just getting to grips with their scales. So by now you've learned the minor pentatonic based on the previous video lessons on the Blackstar channel. If you haven't already learned that scale please go check those videos out because that will really make this one a lot easier to get on board with. So once you know all five shapes of the minor pentatonic scale there's a very simple method you can use to apply this to major because all five shapes are actually the same we're just reordering where they start on the guitar. And also don't forget to watch this video right to the end because at the end of this video I'm going to show you a quick hack that you can use to get to major pentatonic legs even quicker. So like with all scales the major scale is a big impactor on the major pentatonic. So let's just remind ourselves of that once more in the key of A. So we've got A and B C sharp D and E F sharp and G and then finally A. So that's the scale we used in all the other videos to get our scale shapes. We gave each of those notes a number which we referred to as an interval numbers one through seven. The great thing about the major pentatonic if you don't actually have to flatten anything all we have to do is take two notes out of that scale shape. So the major pentatonic is made up of the intervals one two three five and six. So in terms of notes that means A B C sharp one two and three five which is an E and six which is an F sharp. Now you might instantly recognize the form of that from the second shape of the minor pentatonic and you wouldn't be wrong in thinking that. What we previously knew as the second shape of the minor is also the first shape of the major. So if that is the first shape of the major pentatonic you can pretty much guess where I'm going with this next. So that means our second shape of major is what we previously knew as the third shape of minor. That means our third shape of major is what we knew as the fourth shape of minor. The fourth shape of major is now what we knew as the fifth shape of minor and the fifth shape of major is what we previously knew as the first shape of the minor pentatonic. So that quickly we've mapped out all five shapes. Now if you remember back to the minor pentatonic videos I gave you a little tip for finding out the shapes laid out on one string which is to take those five notes so in this case it's going to be A B C sharp E and F sharp lay them out along one string. What that's going to give you is the starting point for each of the positions. So A is my first position, B is my second position, C sharp is going to be my third position, E is my fourth position and F sharp is my fifth position which is also down here. So all of the rules for mapping out these scales are exactly the same. Now the main thing people really struggle with when it comes to major pentatonic is the ability to play licks and play lead guitar comfortably because for most of us that second shape of the minor is not a very intuitive shape to play lead guitar in. We've got a couple of licks there but mostly it's used as a transitional shape when we're going from shape one to shape three or we tend to use this little box at the top and that's about it. So it can be quite a strange scale to start with especially when you're trying to lay down your first major solos you might be wondering where do I actually start putting licks together. So here is where a little hack comes in and this is something you can use very quickly to find major pentatonic licks on the guitar especially in the heat of the moment. So as you know the first shape always starts from the roots so in this case that's A and this is exactly why this principle is hard because the shape that starts on the A is the shape we're not familiar with but let's think about this a different way. If we were playing minor pentatonic we would play this shape from the A note that would be our comfortable starting shape especially if you're new to lead guitar. So how can we easily take our licks that we play in minor and move them to major without thinking too much about it? So it's all about this root note here. This root note is what we're aiming for but the hack is if we focus on this root note here being our second note of our first shape not our first note. So instead of our first finger landing here and us running up the scale like this let's refocus this now so that this A note is played by our little finger and it makes it the second note of the shape. This now puts us starting from this F sharp note here but we've still got that same shape. This is technically the fifth shape of the major pentatonic. So the reason it's useful to think about it this way is because if I've got a bunch of minor licks let's just say my go-to lick is this and I'm playing over a major chord progression and I need to take a lead break I can take that lick and I can play it in that same pentatonic form but so that the A is the second note and now my lick is in A major. Now this is a great quick method for really nailing those major pentatonic licks. It's really easy to think in that first shape and even though technically that is the fifth shape of the major pentatonic we can almost reimagine the scale so we are bending the theory slightly here to make this work for us in a more practical way but if we imagine that our first shape is with our root note as the second note we can instantly play all of those licks that we always play but the interesting thing is if you've already started combining shapes and extending shapes there's also the same patterns so if I was going from here to my second shape that's already in my muscle memory so I don't have to think about it too much so there is a theoretical reason this works which is that the keys of A major and the key of F sharp minor both share the same notes so while I'm playing a pentatonic scale which does resolve down to an F sharp I'm technically playing what in my head looks like a minor shape really I'm still playing major because I'm playing the same notes I'm just using the A as my second note as a quick way to kind of find where that position is to play it. The reason these two scales have the same notes is because they're known as relative keys all keys on the guitar have a relative so every major key has a minor key with exactly the same notes they're just reshuffled so the key of A major has the notes A B C sharp D E F sharp G sharp and the key of F sharp minor has the notes F sharp G sharp A B C sharp D E so the same notes but they just put in a different order this means I can almost use the F sharp minor pentatonic first shape which is technically the fifth shape of my A major pentatonic as my sort of go-to position for playing over an A major track this means I can take all my legs put them in that one position and straight away I can comfortably play in a major key this is also true now anywhere else on the guitar take your first shape pentatonic if you're playing in a major key but make sure your root note is the second of your playing and then all of a sudden you can play in any major key without thinking too much about it but overall the five positions are still the same they just start from what we previously knew as the second shape so there you go guys there is a bit of a walkthrough of the major pentatonic and a little trick you can use to get started with it straight away without thinking too much so hopefully that trick helps you guys map out the major pentatonic very quickly let me know down below in the comments how you've gotten on with that I'd love to hear how you found that little method and also if there's anything else you'd like to see us talk about in future lesson videos please put that below as well don't forget to check out black star amplification on youtube for more free lesson videos just like this and if you're looking for a music teacher in your local area please head to musicteacher.com check out the music teacher database there's a network of fantastic teachers all around the country thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you very soon