G Minor Pentatonic, Piano Side

5 notes to the octave, lit below across two octaves of this reader's keyboard, with every key numbered by where it sits in the scale. The numbers are the useful part mid-bar: a chart moves under you, and the thing you need is which degree is still under the hand — not where the run started.

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.

The right hand takes the fill and the left keeps the written number sounding under it, so a piano reader hears every note of the scale against the chord the chart called rather than in place of it.

Run it hands together until the window stops being a pattern, then take it to a chart counted in G and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.