Pentatonics

Pentatonic shapes crop up all over the guitar neck. Here’s an exercise that helps to visualise some on the top three strings. Starting with any pentatonic scale, you can work through the circle of fifths by changing one note at a time: one note will be raised a semitone to move to the next key.

Of course, you can keep going around: you’ll find that once you’ve played the cycle all the way through, you’ll be a tone higher. Try playing on different strings, too.