Beyond the First Box

If you learned the blues from the beginner path, you own one shape: the minor pentatonic box, sitting at one fret, covering one octave and a bit. Everything in this path assumes that shape and starts from the problem with it.

The problem is not that it sounds bad. It is that it runs out. A solo trapped in one position hits its ceiling after about four bars and then repeats itself, and a listener notices long before the player does.

The five notes of the pentatonic repeat all the way up the neck in five overlapping shapes, usually called positions or boxes. Most players learn box one, decide the other four look like homework, and stay put for years.

The efficient way in is not to memorise all five. It is to learn the joins. Pick one note in your box that also belongs to the next box up, and practise sliding into it until the move is automatic. Do that on two or three notes and you have effectively doubled your range without memorising a single new shape.

E Minor Pentatonic

E minor pentatonic across the whole neck. Find your box, then find the same notes above it.

Box one sliding into box two

G string, twelfth fret. Play the first two notes, then slide the second finger up into the next position and carry on. The slide is the lesson, not the notes.

e
B
G
D
A
E

---------------------------|
-----------------15---17---|
--12---14---16/------------|
---------------------------|
---------------------------|
---------------------------|

This track is a classic twelve-bar in E, which puts box one at the twelfth fret and another at the open strings — the two easiest positions on the guitar to find.

Give yourself a restriction that will feel punishing: start every phrase in one position and end it in another. You may not finish a phrase where you started it.

It will sound awkward for a few choruses. That awkwardness is you learning the joins, and it goes away.

A classic twelve-bar in E. Start each phrase in one position, end it in another.