The E natural minor scale is an indispensable guitar scale to learn. Beginners find it simple and straightforward, providing ample opportunities to create chords and melodies on the fretboard.
Experienced players often rely on this scale, as it allows them to create fast and dynamic solos. Famous examples include Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”.
Scale Patterns
There is more than one way to play a scale pattern on the fretboard, due to different shapes and positions used to represent it (known as “scalar motion”). To gain a better understanding of how particular positions relate to one another, try this exercise: select any string from open sixth string; hold steady beat, count out quarter notes while playing scale; move up one fret at a time until reaching next fret and repeat this sequence until memorizing scale pattern with its notes.
Take a quick glance at this chart for an overview of scale patterns and their relationships to each other. Notice how every position of the minor pentatonic scale shares notes with its adjacent positions – these notes can then be played together to form chords easily! This illustrates that scale positions don’t exist independently from one another and are easily moved around on your fingerboard.
Scales provide you with a strong basis from which to create. You can use scales as building blocks to craft chords, riffs and even entire songs using only scales as building material. In addition, scales provide a range of tones which can be applied across many genres of music – which makes scales an invaluable improvising tool.
Learning either a major or minor scale is an excellent place to begin learning guitar. These scales contain all of the fundamental musical notes used in other pieces; use these scales to craft melodies, harmony parts and soloing solos using these essential notes. Once you have mastered these fundamental scales you can begin exploring other chords and styles!
Minor pentatonic scale is an increasingly popular choice in guitar music, featuring five notes instead of the usual eight notes in its composition and several ways it can be applied for different tonalities. This makes the minor pentatonic an ideal starting point for beginners as an introduction to E as key of note.
Chords
Guitar scales provide a foundation for learning licks, riffs and solos on guitar. Once mastered, they open up new opportunities and can help advance your technique – whether you are an experienced player or newcomer to playing, learning scales will improve fingering patterns as well as speed of playback.
To be able to learn a scale on guitar, first become acquainted with how its notes are laid out on the fretboard. A chromatic scale represents 12 notes that may be altered either one half step (or whole step) up or down on its position in relation to other notes on its fretboard; doing this creates different keys and alters how a chord sounds.
Once you have an understanding of how to move a scale up and down the fretboard, the next step should be pentatonic patterns. “Pentatonic” refers to five and these shortened scales are derived from their octave scale counterpart but with two notes removed for easier learning by beginners.
E minor pentatonic scale is an excellent place to start learning guitar, being easy to memorize and opening up many opportunities for soloing as you become a more experienced guitarist. Beginners may also find this scale helpful since its five-note pattern spans across open strings as well as second or third frets so your fingers won’t have to travel too far across each string.
E harmonic minor scale is another popular choice, being similar to natural minor but with an added raised 7th (Aeolian #7 scale). This scale can be found across numerous genres such as Muse, AC/DC and more – make sure you give this scale a try today!
To play the harmonic minor scale, strum your low E string in open position before placing your middle and ring fingers on each of the second or third frets on all other strings – this pattern allows you to play all nine notes ascending or descending without making mistakes! Practice playing this scale frequently until it becomes part of your muscle memory.
Intervals
Intervals are essential in creating scales, chords, melodies and other musical structures; they determine both sound and feel for guitar playing. Intervals also play an integral part in understanding and navigating your fretboard; in this lesson we’ll introduce intervals from E minor key and discuss effective practice methods.
Beginners may benefit from starting by practicing intervals on an already familiar scale shape, making the transition easier and more intuitive. With this method you will quickly be able to move from any scale shape in an octave into any interval within it without losing your place.
The E minor scale contains one sharp note (F#), with all other notes being naturals. As this scale is so frequently found in rock and metal music, learning it provides an ideal way to begin understanding intervals. Once you have established yourself with it, applying its chords and riffs is key for guitar players; without this ability they will find their creative expression stifled.
As an aid to better understanding intervals, let’s examine a chord progression in E minor. Here, the first chord is an Em shape while the second is an Am7b5; these two very similar chords differ in terms of sound depending on their intervals between each other. Moving the third note up by half step changes its sound from harmonious to dissonant while shifting down fourth note gives bluesy vibes.
Intervals also serve an integral purpose in terms of scale formation. For instance, we can form the E minor scale by starting on an open E string and moving upward to the 12th fret, before moving down to the 5th fret and back up towards open E string again.
This simple example illustrates how intervals can be used to form scales, chords and other musical phrases. Additionally, it shows how changing even one note within a phrase can dramatically change its mood and emotional effect on an entire composition.
Variations
When learning guitar scales, it is advisable to explore all possible variations that exist for any particular scale. Not only will this give you access to more tones but it will also teach you how to move these scales easily up and down the fretboard for enhanced versatility and the creation of authentic sounding lead melodies.
Let’s begin by exploring the basic E minor pentatonic scale pattern. This scale is one of the most frequently employed by guitarists of all skill levels and can easily be memorized for playing. Furthermore, this scale can be played from virtually any fretboard position!
As with the other major scales, there are various ways of playing this scale on guitar. One is using the CAGED method for ascending and descending fretboard movement; another way is using the root note method which moves it based on its starting tone’s root note; these allow you to explore all five positions on the fretboard covering three octaves simultaneously.
Harmonic minor scale is another variation of E minor pentatonic scale that adds more subtlety than its melodic minor cousin, with additional sharps and flats for greater complexity. Harmonic minor can help bring an exotic feel, particularly in music with Middle Eastern influence; additionally it adds emotional depth to solo performances.
The blues scale is the final variation on the E minor pentatonic scale and provides an easy introduction for beginners looking to start exploring this form. Ideal for use over A minor chords and giving an authentic “bluesy” sound, many iconic guitar heroes including Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan favour this variation as their go-to scale for playing bluesy music.
Each variation on this scale comes with its own fingering strategy that’s recommended, while charts provide formulae and highlighted roots so you can quickly locate any scale position on the neck.