Pentatonic vs. Diatonic: Breaking Down the Barriers

Struggling with the divide between pentatonic and diatonic scales? You're not alone. In this eye-opening episode, Steve Stein demolishes the harmful myth that pentatonic scales are somehow inferior to modes or diatonic scales. Drawing from decades of teaching experience, Steve shares how he once fell into the same trap of thinking modes were for "experienced players" while pentatonic scales were just for beginners or punk rockers.

The reality? These scale systems aren't competing hierarchies but complementary tools in your musical arsenal. Steve introduces a powerful mental model: think of pentatonic scales as the skeleton and diatonic scales as the meat on the bones. This approach lets you move fluidly between both worlds depending on what the music demands. Sometimes those additional diatonic notes enhance your playing; other times, they might clutter what you're trying to express.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is Steve's concept of "pentatonic expansions" – a methodology he's refined since beginning his teaching career at age 17. Rather than treating diatonic scales as a completely separate system, he demonstrates how to organically expand from familiar pentatonic frameworks by strategically adding notes. This creates a seamless transition between scale worlds that feels natural and intuitive. Steve also introduces his "transparency thinking" approach to visualizing how various musical elements (scales, modes, triads, CAGED system) overlay and interact on the fretboard. Ready to break through your scale barriers? Check out the Guitar Zoom Academy, where Steve and his team create personalized plans to help guitarists achieve their specific musical goals.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Challenging Scale Hierarchy Thinking
• 2:17 Coexistence of Pentatonic and Diatonic
• 4:19 Pentatonic Expansions Approach
• 5:27 Transparency Thinking in Music Theory
• 6:05 Guitar Zoom Academy Invitation

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey Steve Stine from Guitar Zoom here. One thing I want you to think about if you're a person who's learning how to play scales and you're learning how to solo and all of that kind of stuff and you're kind of caught between this pentatonic and diatonic world, I'm learning how to play pentatonics, but my buddy or my teacher says I should be learning how to play modes, because they're all these things that we tell ourselves, and what I want to talk to you about today is that they're both important, if they're important to you. Okay, I don't want to negate the importance of something. When I was younger I don't know how I got it in my brain, but I got it in my brain that like modes for were for, like experienced people, modes were big boy people, right, modes were adulting, if you will, and pentatonic was for the little kids and you know punk players and whatever. And I couldn't have been more wrong about the way I thought about that.

Steve: 1:37

Okay, one isn't better or worse than the other. It just depends on what you're using them for and how comfortable you are with being able to make that work. Just because you're adding more notes to a scale, which is what diatonic is, doesn't necessarily make it better. It's just that relies on your skill and what you're doing better. It's just that relies on your skill and what you're doing. And sometimes when you're playing adding those notes, it actually kind of clutters things up. And there are times when maybe you're playing more licks or you've got some sort of you know framework on your fretboard that you can move through very comfortably in a pentatonic sense, and then when you add these other notes in that framework doesn't work as well. So my point is is you don't have to live in one world or the other. You can learn a little bit of both of those. Because the truth is is that pentatonic and diatonic do coexist in the same realm.

Steve: 2:31

I always think of it as pentatonic is kind of like the skeleton and then diatonic Again, if you know what I mean by pentatonic pentam meaning five. Diatonic we have seven different notes. Pentatonic, we have five different notes. So pentatonic is like the skeleton and then diatonic. You're just throwing more meat on top of the bones of that skeleton. And when you learn to think about it that way, the beauty is is that you can always pull this back off and you're left with the bones again, so you can move back and forth between those as needed, depending on the song, the musical situation, whatever it is that you find yourself in, whether you need a little bit more of the bones or you need a little bit more of that meat.

Steve: 3:10

And the reason I'm telling you this is because when we learn these things, sometimes what we do is we make this complete separation like. This is the pentatonic world and we're learning these. And now I want to start learning the major scale. The major scale, do,re, me, fa, sol, la, ti do, or the natural minor scale or modes or whatever that is. We think of that as a completely different conversation, and the reality is is that you can actually learn how to move into the diatonic realm from the pentatonic realm using what I refer to as pentatonic expansions.

Steve: 3:43

Now, there's probably a host of different ways you could think about this, but I've always taught it ever since I was a kid, as pentatonic expansions. I started teaching when I was 17, and it always seemed like it made more sense in the mind of the student moving from the pentatonic realm and simply adding notes into the structure that they already see, as opposed to a completely separate system and then not recognizing the relationship between the two. Because when I think about pentatonics and diatonics, you know, modes, all that kind of stuff, and then triads, the cage system, all of those sorts of things. In my mind it's almost like not that everybody knows this if you're not old enough but it's almost like a transparency in my brain, like when I used to be in math class or science class or whatever, and they would bring out the machine and they use those transparencies on top of each other so you could see, oh, here's this, and then you do this on top of it and you could see all of those at once. That's how I think about things. It's not a complete shift from here over to here. It's simply expansions on top of each other and how they're all interacting together. That's what I want you to think about a little bit.

Steve: 4:58

So again, if this is something that you've never thought about before, I'd like you to give it some consideration, see if that makes sense in your brain. And if you want to learn more about this kind of thing, do me a favor. Reach out to Guitar Zoom. You could do a search for Guitar Zoom Academy. Right, and in the Academy, this is what we teach you, and work with you over the course of time is how to do these sorts of things. We find where your flaws are, where your struggles are, we figure out what your goals are and we put all of that together and create a plan for you and work with you and get you to where you want to go. So, anyway, take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon, okay,