«Scale Fluency» by Graham Tippett

Scale Fluency — Pentatonics will give you the complete picture for any pentatonic scale across the entire guitar neck. In essence, it’s a practice method that ties all those loose ends together that you may have picked up from other scale systems such as the CAGED and/or the incomplete ‘five shapes’ approach. It will also bring to life any scale theory you’ve learned as you’ll start to see the big picture, rather than unrelated bits of information that lead to many gray areas on the neck.

This book, as well as being a complete scales practice method, presents a subtle but deeper take on pentatonic scales that most guitarists overlook.

For the beginning to intermediate guitarist, pentatonic scales provide a very effective springboard into soloing, but what tends to happen is that these players quickly become tired of the scale and feel they have to move on to something else like modes to play better solos. This is not the case as what they should do is look deeper into the structure of the pentatonic scale and approach it in a more melodic way, which is what we’ll do in this book.

You’ll see the pentatonic major and minor scales, which are really one entity, as they relate to chords and keys, and you’ll hear and see those famous five patterns in an entirely different way.

With consistent practice the combination of logical horizontal and vertical patterns will allow you to improvise using pentatonic scales in a more satisfying, confident, and melodic way.