What are the pentatonic boxes?

Five four-fret windows that tile the guitar neck, each holding the pentatonic scale with two notes on every string. Each box surrounds one of the five CAGED chord shapes; together they cover every note of the scale everywhere on the neck.

Which pentatonic box should I learn first?

Box 1 — the root on the low E string under your first finger, the E-shape box. It is where most rock and blues playing lives. Then box 4 in the open position, then 2, 5 and 3 to join them.

Are the major and minor pentatonic boxes the same?

Yes. The major pentatonic has the same notes as its relative minor's (C major pentatonic is A minor pentatonic), so the five boxes are the same windows and fingerings; only the note the ear calls home changes.

How do I connect the pentatonic boxes?

Adjacent boxes overlap by two frets, so a phrase can slide up a box on any string and carry on in the next pattern. Practise a lick in one box, then the same lick in the next, then across the seam.

The Five Pentatonic Boxes

Five windows, two notes a string, one chord shape in each.

The pentatonic scale is five notes, and on a guitar five notes fall into five boxes — five four-fret windows that tile the neck, each with two notes on every string. Learn the boxes and you can play the scale anywhere; learn how they connect and you can play it everywhere at once. Every box is also the home of one chord shape: the box is what the scale looks like around a CAGED form, which is why there are five of them and why they come in the order they do.

Here is box 1 of A minor pentatonic, the one every guitarist learns first. The figure follows the text; tap a note to hear it, change the root to move the box to another key.

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What a box is

A box is the pentatonic scale inside a window of four or five frets: two notes per string, no stretches, one finger per fret. The Am barre chord at the fifth fret sits inside box 1 — the chord is five of the box's notes — and the box is what you get when you add the other pentatonic notes within reach of that chord. That is true of every box: a chord shape, and the scale around it.

Box 1

Box 1 starts with the root on the low E string under your first finger — for A minor, the fifth fret — and runs to the eighth. The roots are on the low E, the D string and the high E, so the box begins and ends on A. It is the E-shape box: the Am chord you'd play here is the E form moved up, and every lick in every blues you have ever heard lives in it.

Box 2

Box 2 sits just above, frets 7 to 10, sharing its lowest notes with box 1's highest. The root is on the D string and the B string. It is the D-shape box, and the top of it — the bend at the tenth fret on the B string — is where box 1 solos go when they need somewhere to go.

Box 3

Box 3, frets 9 to 12, is the C-shape box: the root on the A string, the G string and the B string. Fewer people know it well, which is a reason to.

Box 4

Box 4 is the A-shape box, with the root on the A string and the G string — in A minor it is at the twelfth fret, and also down at the nut, where it is the open position: A minor pentatonic with open strings, the first thing many hands learn without knowing its name.

Box 5

Box 5 is the G-shape box, roots on the low E and the high E and the D string, frets 2 to 5 in A minor — and then box 1 begins again at the fifth fret. Five boxes, and the neck is covered.

The major pentatonic is the same five boxes

C major pentatonic has exactly the notes of A minor pentatonic, so its boxes are A minor's boxes: same windows, same fingerings, a different note called home. Box 1 of A minor at the fifth fret is the box around the C major chord's G shape; what changes is which note your ear treats as the root. That is why this site numbers the boxes from the minor pentatonic for both — the windows don't move, only the root does.

Connecting the boxes

The boxes overlap: the top two frets of one are the bottom two of the next. So a phrase can slide up a box by moving two frets on any string and continuing in the next pattern — and playing the scale across boxes, not inside one, is what separates a solo from an exercise. The app's Range Shifting game is exactly this: a phrase sounds in one window, you play it back, and the window walks up the neck a box at a time.

Which box first

Box 1, then box 4 in the open position — between them they cover the two places most songs live — then 2, then 5 and 3 to join them. Learn each one as the chord shape inside it plus the notes around, not as a diagram; the diagram is forgotten by Tuesday, the chord isn't.

Questions

What are the pentatonic boxes?: Five four-fret windows that tile the guitar neck, each holding the pentatonic scale with two notes on every string. Each box surrounds one of the five CAGED chord shapes; together they cover every note of the scale everywhere on the neck.
Which pentatonic box should I learn first?: Box 1 — the root on the low E string under your first finger, the E-shape box. It is where most rock and blues playing lives. Then box 4 in the open position, then 2, 5 and 3 to join them.
Are the major and minor pentatonic boxes the same?: Yes. The major pentatonic has the same notes as its relative minor's (C major pentatonic is A minor pentatonic), so the five boxes are the same windows and fingerings; only the note the ear calls home changes.
How do I connect the pentatonic boxes?: Adjacent boxes overlap by two frets, so a phrase can slide up a box on any string and carry on in the next pattern. Practise a lick in one box, then the same lick in the next, then across the seam.