Chord Colors

F♯ Whole Tone Pentatonic scale

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About the F sharp Whole Tone Pentatonic scale

F sharp Whole Tone Pentatonic is used for impressionist and dreamlike music. Think of it as five notes drawn from the whole-tone scale. It is F Lydian Dominant Pentatonic with the fifth raised.

Its notes are F, A, B, D, and E. The formula is 4 semitones W W W W. It is the third mode of D 7b13 Pentatonic.

An unfretted guitar already sounds E and D from the mode. A guitarist finds the lowest F at the 2nd fret of the low E string. A capo at the second fret lets a guitarist play F Whole Tone Pentatonic with E-shape fingerings.

Positions

Playable shapes for this scale up the neck. Tap any note to hear it.

Pentatonic boxes

The five shapes blues and rock are built on, the first scale most guitarists ever solo with, one box per note up the neck.

Box 1open
Box 2fr 2
Box 3fr 6
Box 4fr 8
Box 5fr 10

Notes and intervals

1F#F♯Root
2A#A♯Major 3rd
3B#B♯Augmented 4th
4DDMinor 6th
5EEMinor 7th
Steps4 semitones W W W W
Semitones4-2-2-2-2
Degrees1 3 4 6 7

Shapes

Chromatic

CC♯D♭DD♯E♭EFF♯G♭GG♯A♭AA♯B♭B

Circle of Fifths

CGDAEBF♯G♭C♯D♭G♯A♭D♯E♭A♯B♭F

Related scales

Whole Tone Pentatonic in other keys

Modes

The same notes, starting on a different note.

Embed this scale

Paste the snippet into a lesson page, a blog or a forum post. The card links back here.

Gb Whole Tone Pentatonic scale on guitar shown as colored note dots
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