If it were me, I’d avoid running complete pentatonic scales up & down for the time being. (Look at the stretches you have to do to create 1-3 note per string pentatonics, as in Frank Gambale’s Speed Picking video). Extremely difficult for me, anyway.
Think instead of riffs that can fit into, or alongside, the pentatonic scale box. Think of minor scales in relation to the pentatonic box, as in my speed -picking exercise. This is 3 notes per string.
Think of where you start on the beat. If you add a “pickup” note before the main “1” beat to these 5-note groups, they become 6-note groups, which is good for jazz or blues.
If you start the 5-note groups on the main beat, with a downstroke, using a “pickup note,” these “odd groupings” suddenly become “normal.”
Like with Eric Johnson: his “groups of five” don’t have to be in a 5/4 time signature; they can be normal pentatonic riffs that you are “zig-zagging” and changing direction in. It just seems like “5” because it’s 4+1. Think of “5’s” as 4 + 1.
Play the fives in a 4-beat, and look at it as a constantly shifting “string of pearls.”
If you play 1-2-3-4-----5-1-2-3-----4-5-1-2-----3-4-5-1-----2-3-4-5, you will start on “1” again, eventually.
If you are going to play 5’s against a 4/4 beat, a drummer I knew showed me this trick: say “opportunity, opportunity, opportunity…”
