Side-Stepping Minor Pentatonic Jazz Guitar Lick (outside playing)

In this lick, we’ll explore a cool side-stepping minor pentatonic idea in A minor.

By shifting familiar pentatonic shapes across the fretboard, we create a more modern, chromatic sound with plenty of tension and movement.

The key is to make each shift feel intentional while keeping the phrasing smooth and rhythmic.

A Minor Pentatonic Scale

The A minor pentatonic scale consists of five notes: A, C, D, E and G. It is derived from the natural minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G), by removing the 2nd and 6th degrees, B and F.

Its interval structure is:

1 – b3 – 4 – 5 – b7

In A minor, this gives us A (root), C (minor third), D (fourth), E (fifth) and G (minor seventh).

Because it omits the 2nd and 6th degrees, the pentatonic scale avoids some of the half-step tensions found in the full minor scale, making it a very versatile sound for blues, rock and modern improvisation.

Here are four basic movable one-octave minor pentatonic shapes to familiarize yourself with its sound.

The Lick

Below, you can see the A minor pentatonic scale pattern used in this lesson. It covers the 2nd, 3rd and 4th strings of the guitar.

As you can hear, the principle of side-stepping is to shift this pattern up by a semitone, creating an outside phrase. This happens on the second beat of the second bar of the lick.

In other words, you’re playing an A# minor pentatonic (or Bb minor pentatonic) phrase over an A minor chord, creating a tense, dissonant sound that resolves when you return to the original A minor pentatonic position.