Beginning Guitar VII - Ear Training

Lesson 5 - Pentatonic Riffs

check your tuning

Lyle: This is the last lesson in this series of ear training lessons for beginning guitarists. I want to focus on little melodic riffs made from the minor pentatonic scale for this final lesson.

Lyle: The minor pentatonic scale is used so much in music for both melody and solo guitar, that I feel it is important you do a little extra study on this scale here in this lesson. Getting your ear used to picking out notes from the scale will help you down the road when you're trying to figure out something on your own.

Lyle: The first part of this exercise will have you picking out notes from the A minor pentatonic scale in this position:

Am pentatonic 5th position

Lyle: Listen to this MP3 clip and see if you can play the same riff on your guitar. Make sure you're in tune first.

01 quiz

Lyle: Now check to see if you got all the notes right, here's the answer:

01 answer


ZoSo: Ahh, root notes.

Lyle: Very good! That was an easy one. Let's try more:



02 quiz

02 answer


ZoSo: 1 fifth an 2 roots

Lyle: Root, 5th, Root. Good!

Lyle: Let's blaze through a bunch more of these in Am. Here we go.....



03 quiz

03 answer




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Lyle: How did you do so far?

gpg: That was a nice jazzy sound, doing just fine.

PaulB: I'm going fine here.

Lyle: Good. Now let's try the same thing but this time using the E minor pentatonic scale:

Em pentatonic open position

11 quiz

11 answer




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Lyle: Now you'll try a few more exercises in the key of Cm. You'll use notes from the C minor pentatonic scale:

Cm pentatonic

21 quiz

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gpg: Lyle, are these random notes you are selecting tonight?

Lyle: Only random within the pentatonic scale.

Lyle: Last one class.....

25 quiz

25 answer


Lyle: I actually tried to use little 3 and 4 note phrases that sounded musical, instead of completely random within the scale.

Lyle: That's all for this lesson and this series. I hope these exercises helped open your ear and your sense of pitch. It takes a lot of practice so keep at it! If you need help learning how to play some of your favorite songs, I can help by making custom lessons for you using this software. I can show you how to play the parts of the song using this interactive TAB and also with video clips of me playing the parts. Email me at Lyle@theguitar.net with your lesson requests. Thanks and see you at the next lesson!