A major pentatonic scale on guitar
The brighter five-note scale behind country and major blues, and how it relates to the minor pentatonic shape you already know.
- Notes
- A · B · C♯ · E · F♯
- Formula
- 1 · 2 · 3 · 5 · 6
- Notes in the scale
- 5
Major pentatonic is the sweet, open-sounding cousin of minor pentatonic. Same five-shape geometry, same two-notes-per-string economy, but built on the major 3rd and 6th instead of the ♭3 and ♭7. It is the sound of country lead, of the major-key side of blues, and of a great deal of the Allman Brothers.
Here is the shortcut worth knowing: A major pentatonic contains exactly the same five notes as F♯ minor pentatonic. The shapes you already own transfer directly — play the minor pentatonic box three frets lower than the major key you are in and you are playing major pentatonic. What changes is which notes you treat as home.
Over a blues it asks more of you than minor pentatonic does. Of its five notes, the C♯ belongs to the A7 and to neither of the other two chords in the form. That is the source of both its sweetness and its difficulty: it is tied to one chord in a way minor pentatonic never is.
Where it sits on the neck
The positions are named by where the A falls, so they are the same five frets as the minor pentatonic in A. The root does not move when the scale around it changes; only the dots between the roots do.
The faster route in is the relative minor. F♯ minor pentatonic and A major pentatonic are the same five notes, and F♯ sits on the low E string at the 2nd fret. So the box 1 fingering you already play at the 5th fret becomes A major pentatonic when you slide it down three frets. That subtraction works in every key: for G major pentatonic the low E root is at the 3rd fret, three down is the nut, and the open E minor pentatonic shape is what you want.
- Root on the A string — the open strings to the 3rd fret.
- Root on the G string — the 2nd fret to the 5th.
- Root on the low E string — the 5th fret to the 8th.
- Root on the D string — the 7th fret to the 10th.
- Root on the B string — the 10th fret to the 13th.
What to play it over
A, A7 and Amaj7 — the I chord of a blues in A, a country tune in A, the major side of anything. Over an A7 it hands you three chord tones (A, C♯ and E) and adds the 9th and the 13th, B and F♯. That is why it sounds sweet rather than merely correct: nothing in it is fighting the chord.
The trap is the IV. Move to a D7 and the C♯ becomes the major 7th of D, a semitone under the chord's root and a semitone over its own ♭7. It grinds, and it grinds in a way that does not read as blues. The standard handling is to switch to minor pentatonic for the IV and come back to major for the I, which is one of the oldest sounds in the idiom and the reason so many players seem to drift between the two.
Over the V it is neither useful nor harmful. Nothing in it clashes with an E7 and nothing in it spells one either.
The common mistake
Playing the shape and expecting it to sound major. It will not. Play the F♯ minor box at the 2nd fret while thinking F♯ minor, resolve to F♯, and it sounds minor, because a shape carries no key of its own — the note you keep returning to does. Aim at A and C♯, start phrases on them, finish phrases on them, and the same five dots turn major. Learn to hear the difference before you trust the geometry, because the geometry will happily let you play the wrong one.
Where it turns up in the licks
Nothing on the site is written from a major pentatonic shape. What the blues material does instead is borrow its notes one at a time, which is how most players actually use it.