Mandolin Fills With A Minor Pentatonic

A Minor Pentatonic runs 5 notes to the octave. Below it is laid onto this chair's GDAE fretboard with every A marked, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the pattern — it is where the root is when the chord changes under it.

Gritty, bluesy, and direct — five notes with no half steps, so each one lands with attitude over a minor or dominant chord. The sound of rock and blues lead playing.

Heard in: Blues, rock, hard rock, metal, funk, and soul solos — the first scale most lead players learn and the one they never leave.

A mandolin fill is short and often tremolo-doubled, so the scale here is a source of two- and three-note runs between the vocal phrases, not a ladder to climb.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a song in A and let the melody pick its own notes out of it.