The G Major Pentatonic Scale

The G what-now? Lets take a second to look at what the words mean:

Pent = 5 (Five, like a pentagon has 5 sides)

Tonic = First note of a scale; in this case G is the first note

Scale = Sequence of notes ordered low to high and vice versa

So, the G major Pentatonic Scale is a set of 5 notes played up or down. It works best over any chord sequence in the key of G (which are any songs that use the chords G, Am, Bm, C, D and Em).

This is the same set of notes used to play 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd, which I do have a video tutorial for.

However, please refrain from learning the riff as it also involves strumming and playing the notes out of scale order. For best progress, I highly recommend learning the main order first as per below.

Guitar melodies are written in TAB (short for tablature). This is where every line represents a string on your guitar, and the numbers are the fret numbers.

​

Neck diagrams help visualise the scale on your fretboard. Each black dot shows where to place your fingers. The circled dots are the G notes, these show you where you should start and end the scale.