Pentatonic Patterns All Jazz Musicians Should Know!

When it comes to learning scales and improvising, many people start with pentatonics. Pentatonic scales are five-note scales that sound good over almost anything. But since they’re a technically simpler scale, some players may disregard them in favor of more complex scales. But there is a wealth of sounds in pentatonic playing just waiting to be unlocked, and some of the greats like John Coltrane understood this.

Today we’ll look at five pentatonic patterns that will level up your playing. But before we get going, you’ll also want to check out our accompanying YouTube video Pentatonic Patterns All Jazz Musicians Should Know! as well as our resource called Pentatonic Patterns for Jazz Improvisation.

Let’s get into it!

Contents

Minor pentatonic pattern

Intervallic minor pentatonic pattern

Dominant pentatonic pattern

Major pentatonic pattern

Minor pentatonic pattern with triplets

Minor pentatonic pattern

Jumping into our first pattern—this one is based off the C minor pentatonic, which is spelled C, Eb, F, G, Bb, and C. That’s 1, b3, 4, 5, b7. 

This patterns is pretty simple, let’s analyze it. We’re going up three degrees of our pentatonic scale and down two. 

A good way to think of movement in scales is by skips and steps. Anything linear is step-wise, anything not is a skip. So as we move from C to Eb, that’s a step, since we’re not skipping any notes of the scale. Eb to F, same thing. But from F to C is a skip, because we’re skipping Eb. So we can call this pattern step up, step up, skip down and the pattern repeats itself. We’re doing this on every single degree of the pentatonic scale. 

Descending is the same thing, just backwards. We have step down, step down, skip up, then the pattern repeats. 

Intervallic minor pentatonic pattern

Now things get a bit more interesting.

Using our same analysis, we’ve got the same minor pentatonic scale, but this time we’re skipping on the first degree right from C to F. Then F to G is a step, and G to Eb is a skip again. So in total it’s skip up, step up, skip down, and the pattern repeats itself for all of the degrees of the pentatonic scale. 

Likewise for descending, we’ve got skip down, step down, skip up.

This is a great exercise to use in different keys and with pentatonic shifting. Check out how Ryan plays between C minor pentatonic and F# minor pentatonic in our accompanying YouTube video.

Dominant pentatonic pattern

Let’s try another pentatonic scale—this time a dominant pentatonic pattern. A dominant pentatonic is a lot like a major pentatonic, but this time with a dominant seventh, meaning it’s spelled 1, 2, 3, 5, b7. 

Let’s check out this pattern. These scales work really well with dominant seventh chords, as you may imagine. Using our same analysis, we have step up, step up, step up, step up, step up, step down, step down, skip down. So those last two notes, E to G in that first measure that’s a skip that can trip you up if you aren’t ready for it. Looking it this, you can analyze it as two four-note cells put together. You can separate them out and practice each half individually.

Similarly, here’s what the descending version looks like—step down, step down, step down, step down, step up, skip up. 

Another great way you can use this technique is by playing it over a m7b5 chord on the third degree—so that would be C dominant pentatonic over Em7b5 (or E half diminished seven).

Major pentatonics

Moving on to major pentatonics, this one is spelled 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. You’ll notice that this eliminates the four and the seven, both of which involve half steps. This makes the major pentatonic more versatile because you don’t have to worry about the tendencies of the 4 and 7 to resolve—they just sound good.

It’s important to remember that our major and minor pentatonic scales are also relative to each other—like C major pentatonic is the same notes as A minor pentatonic and so on. 

Analyzing this, we have four note cells, starting on each of of our pentatonic scale degrees. So from our root C, we step down, skip up, step up, and then repeat. 

Descending, we have step up, skip down, step down, and that repeats as well.

This pattern sounds good over Cmaj7, Am7, Dm7, G7, G7sus and really any chord in the realm of C major. 

An easy way to use this is just playing C major pentatonic over a ii-V-I — so that would be Dm7, G7, Cmaj7.

Minor pentatonic pattern with triplets

Moving on to our final example, we’re going to go back to minor pentatonics and use this pattern with triplets.

We’ll have our steps and skips again, but we’ll have a few more notes because we’re using triplets. 

Our first cell is C, Bb, G, F, G, Bb—step down, step down, step down, step up, step up. No skips there.

Next we’ll skip up to Eb and the pattern repeats itself—step down, step down, step down, step up, step up, then skip up to F. Really it’s just skips between cells. 

A way you might think of using these triplet patterns is by playing out of time like Coltrane would in the late 60s. To hear what that sounds like, make sure to check out how Ryan plays it in our YouTube video.

You may also want to try shifting through tonalities—so maybe C minor pentatonic, C# minor pentatonic and Ab minor pentatonic. Experimenting with playing in different groupings can disguise the pentatonic and make it more interesting.

That’s all for today, but make sure to check out our our resource called Pentatonic Patterns for Jazz Improvisation, as well as our accompanying YouTube video Pentatonic Patterns All Jazz Musicians Should Know! We’ll see you next time!