Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

Welcome to UnderstandingGuitar.org! If this is your first visit with us you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. I regularly post tips and exercises having to do with learning to play the guitar!

As I announced…

…a while back (see blog post), I decided to “start over” as it were. I felt that my practice wasn’t going anywhere and that I needed to reestablish my learning pattern. In my “re-effort” (is that a word?) I eventually stumbled upon (and blogged several times) about GuitarCardio.com.

This site eventually lead me to start researching scales and that presented the question “what was the most effective scale or group of scales to learn”. I eventually came upon something called “the box position.”

What I learned about the box position, to my surprise, is that it was not a set of scale patterns that one learns. It appears to be a description of playing within a single position. That single position doesn’t necessarily need to be the same pattern nor the same type of scale.

For example, the A Pentatonic Major scale in three different positions would be playing in the box position. Additionally, so would playing the A Pentatonic Major scale in 5th position and then the A Pentatonic Minor scale in 5th position.

The Box Position

I spent time researching and trying to understand what exactly is meant by “The Box Position” (a.k.a “The Box Pattern”). My conclusions is rather simple and straight forward.

There is not a fixed set of scales that make up the box pattern; every source or book can (and will) have their own method and scales. Take, for example, the link I’ve provided before on this topic previously: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/sc_box.htm

Their method of presenting the box position includes learning six scales in a specific order (I’m not yet sure if there is significance to the order); while another source, a book this time, shows the box pattern in all Pentatonic scales in different positions on the neck.

Both seem valid, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. That plus in all my research, I’ve not found consistent presentations of the box pattern. This lead me to the conclusion that there is no fix set of scales to make up the box pattern.

The Box Position using The Pentatonic Scale

I was in a bookstore looking to pick up a reference book on guitar scales. I stumbled upon a book titled “Practical Pentatonics” by Askold Buk. It is a small 44 page book about how flexible the Pentatonic scales can be and what can be done if applied, umm, creatively.

Now, obviously, due to copyright laws ( ) I can’t give away or post any of the examples they have in the book. That isn’t the point of the post, anyway. I want to share, in my own words, what I’ve learned and discovered from this book. Of course, if you become interested in this topic, I’d encourage you to purchase this book or a book like it (though, I’ve not found others like it).

Examples

Below are some basic examples. First, I’m going to start out with a basic Pentatonic Minor Scale in the key of A. [If you can not see the rest of the post, please view the post on UnderstandingGuitar.org. Most RSS readers will not display the following content properly.]

Basic A Pentatonic Minor Scale

Box 1:

Box 2:

Those are basic A Pentatonic Minor scales. I’m going to uses these as the basis of the example for what I want to convey. Following, are the TuxGuitar Files and Screen captures of the music that I’ve posted above (the recordings). You should practice and memorize these before trying the more “advance” or main purpose of this post.

Memorizing these scales will make the next part more rewarding and allow you to be a bit more creative. Finally my advice would include to practice these against a metronome or with TuxGuitar.

Tux Guitar Files

TuxGuitar file - A Pentatonic Minor - Box 1

TuxGuitar file - A Pentatonic Minor - Box 2

Image Versions of the TuxGuitar Files

A Pentatonic Minor - Box 1

A Pentatonic Minor - Box 2

Create your Own Improvised Solo!

Now comes the fun part — the part that I’ve been getting to this entire post. Play your own custom, unique, unscripted solo. (A Pseudo Solo )

How to do this improvisation?

Though, I suppose I don’t quite understand why it work, we know that these notes sound good together. We know that because they make up the scale. So it make sense that they sound good together. If we break away from the pattern which we traditionally know as “the scale” — the ascending and descending sound — we can play something that sounds improvised or like a solo that Hendrix or Santana might play (okay, it won’t sound that good, but you get the idea.)

Start by selecting one of the two scales. I’ve spent time playing with both but I generally like the sounds out of the 5th position scale. What I’ve called Box 2.

Play notes within that scale without leaving the box but don’t do large jumps within the scale. For example, don’t do something like:

An Example Of What To Avoid when using the Pentatonic Solo

In the above example, there is technically nothing wrong with it. I just don’t feel that it sounds as smooth as it could. If you navigate the scale with small steps, you can produce a very clean-feeling sound.

To archive this, go in small increments up and down the scale with no particular pattern. Just below is an example of a lick that I’m trying to get at. Under the heading “My examples” are some examples that I’ve recorded. You can try to imitate the examples, but that isn’t the ultimate point of this post which is why I’ve not posted any of the sheet music for the recordings.

A Pentatonic Solo Example

My Examples

Box 1 with Effects:
Box 2 with Effects:
Box 2 with Effects [has mistakes]:

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.