Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Discuss the Mandolin lesson: Learn to Play in Any Key: Expand Your Territory

I wish the music from the little speaker was much louder. I really have a hard time hearing the guitar over the mandolin.

Just wondering after learning the pentatonic scales where do you recommend that i go from here , applying them to relatively simple tunes to start out with ?

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Welcome to the forum. Great question Larry !

Pentatonic scales can be very useful.

The basic melody of most/many tunes and songs in bluegrass falls into this scale more often than not. This means it’s a good place to start when looking for the melody of a tune. (Billy In The Low-ground is a good example of a basic melody nearly completely made up of the pentatonic scale. )

Licks made up of the notes within the pentatonic scale are an easy go-to for filler licks also.

Hope this helps some,

Because of certain notes being eliminated form the major scale, the pentatonic scale can, in certain circumstances , continue to be used through other chords in the key signature and still fit the chord progression.

Dave

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