The minor pentatonic scale on bass is fundamental for improvisation as it works very well melody-harmony relationship.
Is part of the bass scales to practice for the bass player.
Fingering to play the Minor Pentatonic scale on the Electric Bass
In these bass scales pdf we leave you the three most common fingering to play well this pentatonic minor scale.
We are going to take as tonic the 4th string in the fifth fret, in the pitch note A
The numbers are the fingers of the left hand, so, we have to master 3 ways to start the scale, with fingers 1, 3 and 4.
Bassist ! study this pdf carefully and remember that you must always practice with the metronome at 60-80 bpm quarter note
and then go up in speed.
Note: in the fingering with finger 3, this is repeated, because we must slide with it.
How is the minor pentatonic bass scale formed ?
To form the minor pentatonic we will go to the minor natural scale and we will remove 2 notes, these are, the 2nd and the b6 of the scale.
This leaves us with a minor arpeggio plus the 4th and the 7th minor.
These are the bass scales notes:
- Root
- Minor third
- Perfect fourth
- Perfect fifth
- Minor seventh
The minor pentatonic in the bass is fundamental to create lines in songs and to improvise,
in addition, adding a note but we will obtain the blues scale bass, but that we will study it in another section.
How do I use the Minor Pentatonic scale on the bass?
How to use the minor pentatonic on the bass is fundamental for any bass player.
We can use it as a relative scale of the major pentatonic, for this, we must start from the 5th note of the major pentatonic.
Example: If we are in A major pentatonic scale, from its 5th note (in this case F#) we will launch the minor pentatonic scale.
In addition, we are going to be able to play it on top of any minor chord, which has a clear minor seventh.
Here are a few examples: Examples from (A)
- Minor triads chords – Am ✅
- Second suspended chords – Asus2 ✅
- Minor sixth chords – Am6 ✅
- Minor seventh chords plus 9- Am7, Am9 ✅