Spicing Up Your Pentatonic Licks

Here's a great way to really open your pentatonic scale playing and have it sound less 'pentatonic-y'.

A lot of exercises focus on two note per string patterns for pentatonic scales, and after you've practiced those over and over memorizing the 'boxes', when you start improvising and coming up with pentatonic lead licks, they tend to have a predictable two note per string sound to them. One way to get out of that is to arpeggiate spots of a given pentatonic box. For instance:

O O O O - O
- - - - O -
- - O O - -
O O - - O O

We all know that box. For this lesson, let's treat that as the minor pentatonic box for the Dm chord starting on the A string, 5th fret.

If we start too look at arpeggio possibilities within here, we can come up with some cool little licks that don't sound predictable:


e-----5-8-5---5-
B---6-------8---
G-7-------------


B-------6---------
G-----7---7---5-7-
D---7-------7-----
A-8---------------


Here's an mp3 of what the riffs sound like:
http://www.codyclarke.com/pentariff.mp3

Now we've got licks that start with an arpeggio and then end with a familiar 2 note per string pentatonic sound. You can sweep the arpeggios in these and then hammer-on the rest for a speedy lick, or just alternate pick them.

Find your own little arpeggios within each of the 5 pentatonic boxes. I suggest using minor pentatonics, as your riffs will have a more bluesy sound. After you've gotten used to this, try creating arpeggios that span two pentatonic boxes for more of a challenge!