I think you have to have a flexible fingering for pentatonic scales, that means be able to play them in many ways. How to form major pentatonic scales on piano one way of forming the pentatonic is to use the following formula after picking the starting note of the scale. Theyre used to play melodies, riffs, lead guitar solos, and bass lines. A single, fast fingering for the funky pentatonic scale. Pentatonic patterns are extremely common in popular music, especially the rock and blues genres. A guide to the jazz pentatonic scales marius nordal on. Optional fingerings for pentatonic scales on the guitar. You can also practice your fingering by playing pentatonic, or fivenote, scales.
Download free printable sheet music for the scale with fingering in pdf format. Cs relative minor pentatonic scale, a minor pentatonic, begins on the 6 th scale degree of the major pentatonic scale shown above. The pentatonic scale is frequently used in lots of popular music styles. There are a total of 430 finger exercises in this book. The scales are used often for composing melodies and for improvisation. Here, you see some optional fingerings for a few of the pentatonic scale patterns namely, patterns one. The exercises in this book use the major scale, pentatonic scale, blues scale, and chromatic scale. Note that a minor pentatonic has identical notes with c major pentatonic but in different order. Like in classical music when we learn the scales we are asked to always start at the root and go from there, i would suggest when doing any jazz scale that you also attempt to discover fingers starting from different positions of the scale and treating them as the root. Different piano techniques and should cover most scales including pentatonic scale.
It doesnt claim to be an introduction to jazz piano or jazz improvization theory. Over short pentatonic passages use any fingering that is convenient in the context. Play the first five notes of each scale beginning the c scale, followed by the d scale, e scale, and so on. Pentatonic scale fingerings major and minor piano street. What is the most common fingering for the pentatonic scale. There are both pentatonic major and minor the minor is slightly more often used. A minor pentatonic contains scale degrees 1, b3, 4, 5, and b7. Piano fingering refers to finger placement on the piano keyboard and the hand techniques used to play the piano. Full fingerings for each of these nine scales are given in all twelve keys for both right and left hand, which is to say, the book gives us two hundred and sixteen sets of fingerings in all assuming ive done the arithmetic right. These are the four most common scales in pop and rock music. In addition to the traditional pentatonic scale, this book introduces eight other pentatonic scales.
This a fabulous book if youre a piano player yearning for learning jazz, blues, and. The tips you find here focus on how you finger the patterns. The black keys on your piano are pentatonic and theyre in the key of g flat and its relative minor, e flat minor. Learn the how to play the g major pentatonic scale for piano. D minor pentatonic has the same notes as f major pentatonic and so it goes. An exciting book on the theory and studies of the pentatonic scales for the. Fast, easy, pentatonic scale fingering for blues piano 15 youtube. Full fingerings for each of these nine scales are given in all twelve keys for both.