The word "pentatonic" derives from Greek; "pente" meaning five and "tonic" meaning tone. As you guessed, the E Pentatonic Major pentatonic scale consists of five tones or notes.
In general, the Pentatonic scale is very easy to learn and is often the first scale a beginner guitarist will learn.
You may be thinking the E Pentatonic Major scale notes looks very similar to it's minor counterpart, and you would be mostly correct. The difference is the position of the root notes highlighted by the dark blue circles.
The E Pentatonic Major scale formula is
These notes are as follows
The E Pentatonic Major step intervals are
The 5 Patterns of the E Pentatonic Major Scale
A pattern is a set of notes that are played one after the other. There are five different patterns that can be played in E Pentatonic Major, each of which are inter-connected across the fretboard.
The notes of the scale are displayed on the fretboard by the light grey circles, with the darker blue circles highlighting the root notes. The root notes are always E tones. The numbers on each circle indicate which finger should play the note. The patterns are as follows
Pattern 1
Pattern 2
Pattern 3
Pattern 4
Pattern 5
