I had a quick question involving the boxes of the major pentatonic.....say we're playing a song in the key of D, I understand the use of the boxes, but how do I translate them (major pentatonic boxes) to the frets that come before the note D on the E string? Example: I wanted to play in the key of D starting on the third fret, what box would I use?


PLEASE HELP!!!!

You wanna start on 3rd fret of which string?

Well you may not e able to start exactly on the 3rd fret in every case, you would need to pick the closest box. Fortunately in this case there is one ...

The thing to realize is that the boxes repeat every octave. If you follow the boxes up the scale on the E string you would get:

D E F# G A

Starting on the 10th fret of the E string, is D, E is 12th, F# is 14th, G is 15th, but wait, we can move down an octave which means moving down 12 frets, to the 3rd Fret on E (which is still the same note on the E string, a G), and play the 4th box an octave lower, and there you have it, a D major pentatonic scale on the 3rd fret

Andrew, I just want to make sure I understand everything correctly. When I added the 3 semitones to the F# box using your formula from the lesson, I got the note A. Am I using the formula wrong? For my formula I started by adding the two semitones to D and got the scale of D, E, F#, A, B, D.

Wow, what rubbish I wrote last night! My defense is that I was very tired when I got in ... you are right, the D major pentatonic is:

D E F# A B

The rest is correct though, about the octaves - when you get to the E box (2nd box) you can play that on the 12th fret or on open string, F# on the 14th or 2nd, A on the 17th or 5th, and B on the 19th or 7th.

As I said originally, in this case you can't play a box on the 3rd fret, but you have the choice of 2nd or 5th, which is close enough.

Thanks for all the help Andrew!!! You cleared up my major pentatonic woes!