Extending Pentatonic Shapes

When looking at scale shapes in the past, I've found it difficult to link shapes together and move between them fluently, so I was keen to address this when revisiting the common 2nps pentatonic scale shapes.

It occured to me that using a variety of approaches to cover the same material would help reinforce the position of the notes without becoming disengaging, and would provide a more musical experience. I found the following useful in becoming familiar with the position of notes for a particular scale across a 'full' half of the fingerboard without my thinking becoming rooted inside these common box shapes:

Nb - clearly there are many permutations of all these exercises
-Only spending long enough on 2nps shapes to become vaguely familiar with them
-Converting 2nps shapes into 3nps shapes moving along the fingerboard
-Looking at 3nps shapes across the fingerboard introducing repeated notes

At the lower end of the fingerboard, these 3nps shapes can become tricky or sometimes unplayable using just the fretting hand. Where this was the case, I began to look at 1nps horizontal shapes across the fingerboard and using tapping to play these 3nps patterns as 2-note (fretting hand) + 1-note (tapped) ideas. When played in one position this gives a 'box' shape + a 'line' of notes, and when played moving along the neck allows you to cover a much greater area and use much wider intervals than would be possible using the fretting hand alone (for most people). This is cool because:

-Wider intervals sound less predictably pentatonic
-This idea encourages you to 'think' in two areas of the fretboard simultaneously, rather than just one
-Higher up the neck, you can also play wider intervals with the fretting hand

Another useful method of linking scale shapes together is by playing each horizontal pattern as 3-note chords (four groups of 3 across 6 strings). This helps to reinforce three notes at a time, rather than just one, and helps to give a more harmonic and rhythmic perspective to these pentatonic ideas. This 3-note chord shape idea can then be modified to incorporate notes from the previous or next 'line' shape (thus playing the chords within one of the original 2nps box shapes). This idea is demonstrated in Alex Machacek's DVD 'Pentatonic Concepts', which is providing something of a rough guide for my own exploration and something to check back to if I feel like I'm getting a little lost.