Have you found yourself stuck in scale boxes?
The extended pentatonic scale will help you navigate outside of your standard pentatonic box shapes, and will lead you to more diverse pentatonic phrasing.
Minor Pentatonic Scale Refresher
Since you’re here you likely know you’re standard pentatonic scale shapes pretty well.
However, if you need to refresh your pentatonic scale knowledge, then check out this post.
How do you extend a pentatonic scale?
Extending a pentatonic scale is done by breaking out of the traditional pentatonic box shape(s). You do this by moving the scale across the guitar neck in a horizontal fashion (left to right on the fretboard) rather than a vertical (up and down a box) fashion.
Extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale
This extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale shape moves in octaves. It’s arguably the most common and “main” extended pentatonic scale shape.
This extended pentatonic scale shape is easy to transpose since you keep the same shape from one octave to the next.
Even though this example shows the extended A minor pentatonic scale, I encourage you to try it with other root notes as well.
3 NPS Extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale
Extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale PDF
3 NPS Extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale PDF
Extended Pentatonic Scale Shapes
Shape 1
Shape 2
Shape 3
Shape 4
Extended Pentatonic Scales Video Lessons
Modern, updated video
This is my latest video on the Extended Pentatonic Scale, on my newest channel.
Older video
Please excuse the poor video quality! I recorded this video 4 years ago, and it was the first video lesson I ever did on YouTube!
Also note that this is no longer my main channel. You can find my main channel with the video above this one, or here.
Extended Pentatonic Scale Final Thoughts
Even though you looked at lots of examples here, I leave you with a fretboard diagram.
Using the diagram you can come with your own extended pentatonic scale positions.
Try using 3 note per string shapes. Try string skipping. You’ll always come up with your best ideas when you actively practice and analyze a scale across the entire fretboard.
Extended A Minor Pentatonic Scale Fretboard Diagram
Leave your questions in the comments below!
