B Minor Pentatonic — Viola

B Minor Pentatonic is 5 notes to the octave (pentatonic family), drawn here along the Viola's CGDA strings with every B named, so home is findable from any finger.

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.

Because the strings climb in fifths, one hand position covers a wide span of the fingerboard — four fingers, a fifth of range per string, and the same finger pattern repeating across every neighbouring pair. Learning a scale here is mostly learning WHICH position it wants and where the shifts fall.

Open-string drones: 2 of the Viola's 4 open strings belong to B Minor Pentatonic — the D string (the second) and the A string (the fifth) — so they can ring beneath the line as a fixed reference.

The D string is a chord tone of the B tonic triad, so it stays consonant against every degree of the scale.

The C string and the G string sit outside B Minor Pentatonic: stop them rather than let them sound through the phrase.

Play it slowly with a long bow, one note to a stroke, and listen for the notes that pull sharp or flat against the open C and A. Intonation on this instrument is a conversation with the open strings — nothing on the fingerboard decides it for you.