While our buddy “The Box” is incredibly useful and full of possibilities, it can be a little bit limited once you start to get more accustomed to playing lead guitar. After you are pretty comfortable with the licks within “The Box” from the last section, it’s time to spice things up with some simple additions to your Pentatonic repertoire. These “neighbors” to “The Box” are an incredibly simple way to make the Minor Pentatonic scale come alive.
The “BB Box”
This little 5-note shape at the top of “The Box” is known as the “BB Box”, because it is used extensively in the playing of legendary blues guitarist, BB King. Think of it as a little add-on at the top of “The Box”. TONS of licks can be generated from this position, especially when you combine it with “The Box”, and bend the highest note up a whole step. Visualize it as a little “house”, with the notes on the 8th and 10th frets of the E and B strings as the walls, and the single note on the 9th fret of the G string as the peak of the roof.
Gettin’ low with the “Back End”…
There are couple of notes on the back end of “The Box” that are very useful. We’ll refer to them as (surprise!) the “Back End”. When these notes are combined with “The Box” and the “BB Box”, we get an “Extended Box” that looks like this.
Even though this new “Extended Box” technically has 3 separate parts, you need to perceive it as one position. This isn’t too difficult, since it still uses “The Box” as its centerpiece, with lil’ extensions on either end. See the next section on the “Pentatonic Tree” to learn and easy way to use this position to cross the fretboard diagonally.
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