Pentatonic scales are among the first things most beginning bass players learn. This lesson explains some ways to develop your use of them by mastering the modes (or inversions, if you like) of a pentatonic scale, then adding chromatic and diatonic neighbor notes to create patterns that can be used wherever the scale might be. Credit goes to Rich Falco, director of the WPI jazz studies program in Worcester, MA, USA -- he showed me this in private lessons, and I've successfully applied them since. Here goes! Take a C major pentatonic scale, and treat it as an arpeggio first, or as the root scale for a series of modes. This gives you the original C Major Pentatonic and then the same series of notes, starting on D. You can proceed to do this up the neck, starting on each successive note of the scale, playing one-octave sequences