Major Scale
For major scales you can follow a pattern and that pattern is:
W W H W W W H or if you prefer T T S T T T S. WHAT!!!! I hear you cry. Popular musicians (by that I mean musicians who play popular music rather that the latest fad band) tend to use the W H version. This is where the W stands for whole note and the H stands for (you guessed it) half note. If you're more of a classical persuasion the T stands for Tone and the S for semi-tone. Either way, the W or T means two frets on a guitar fingerboard and the H or S means one. To avoid further confusion, I'll stick with the W H version. So let's apply this to the C major scale to see where it gets us. C major starts on the note of C (doh!). You go up two frets on the guitar (a whole note) and you get - a D. Another two frets and you get - an E. So that's the W W, so next comes the H, as I said that's one fret (half a note) which gives you a F (remember no E#). Next is another W which gives you a G Another W gives you an A Yet another W gives you a B and the last H gives you another C. So in summary you get So let's try another starting note. In this case G.
G major starts on the note of G (doh!). You go up two frets on the guitar (a whole note) and you get - an A. Another two frets and you get - a B. So that's the W W, so next comes the H, as I said that's one fret (half a note) which gives you a C (remember no B#). Next is another W which gives you a D Another W gives you an E Now for the tricky bit. Yet another W gives you a F# (not an F as one fret up from an E would be a half note not a whole one) and the last H gives you another G. Obviously helps though if you know where the notes are on a guitar fingerboard (there’s a chart for that here) and if you know that you can actually work out loads of fingerings for all the scales.
Going back to the C major scale. The frets the notes apply to in this case are (on the 5th string) C = 3, D = 5, E = 7, F = 8, G = 10, A = 12, B = 14 and C = 15. Whilst you can actually play a melody on one string only, it’s not that common. That's why a guitar has six strings. Your hand would be moving back and forth like crazy just to play a few notes. So how do you spread that across the guitar? In standard guitar tuning (where the strings are tuned E, A ,D, G, B, E) the strings are generally tuned so that the next string up sounds as though you were fingering the fifth fret (one exception which is the B string which is tuned as though you were fingering the fourth fret on the G string) So this means that you can play the scale either like I outlined above or you can skip across the strings. The easiest way (and the way most beginners learn this scale) is: C = 3rd fret 5th string D = Open 4th string E = 2nd fret 4th string F = 3rd fret 4th string G = 0pen 3rd string A = 2nd fret 3rd string B = Open 2nd string C = 1st fret 2nd string Which looks like this (if you don't know how tablature works don't worry, in a nutshell the lines are each string with the sixth (thickest) at the bottom and the first (thinnest) at the top, with the number being the fret on that string you put your finger on) You might see it written like this
E ----------------------------------------------- B ---------------------0-1---------------------- G ---------------0-2---------------------------- D -------0-2-3--------------------------------- A ---3------------------------------------------- E ----------------------------------------------- This is just one octave (group of 8 notes). A more common way to play this scale is by using this pattern. C = 3rd fret 5th string D = 5th fret 5th string E = 2nd fret 4th string F = 3rd fret 4th string G = 5th fret 4th string A = 2nd fret 3rd string B = 4th fret 3rd string C = 5th fret 3rd string Which looks like this Which, again, you might see it written like this
E ----------------------------------------------- B ----------------------------------------------- G ---------------2-4-5------------------------- D -------2-3-5--------------------------------- A --3-5----------------------------------------- E ----------------------------------------------- Or on a guitar fretboard the pattern looks like this. If you play the scale starting with your second finger on the C then all the other notes will naturally fall under a finger on your hand.
One of the brilliant things about guitar is that, whilst there are many patterns for each scale, each pattern is moveable. This means that if you were to move this pattern up the neck two frets (so that you start on the second note of the C Major scale) like below, you are then playing the D Major scale. D = 5th fret 5th string E = 7th fret 5th string F# = 4rd fret 4th string G = 5th fret 4th string A = 7th fret 4th string B = 4th fret 3rd string C# = 6th fret 3rd string D = 7th Fret 3rd string Which again looks like this And on the fingerboard
Move it up the the 7th fret and you're playing E Major, one more fret gives you F Major and so on. So you can see from this that if you learn this pattern, as long as you know the notes on the 5th string, which you can get from the fingerboard chart, you can play all the major scales. This pattern also works with all notes on the 6th string as well. Two for the price of one. Result!!
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Theory Home Scales - what are they? Major Scale Natural Minor Scale Scale spelling Sharp Keys Flat Keys Pentatonic Scales COMING SOON Blues Scale Chord Construction Major Chords Major 7th Chords Minor Chords Minor 7th Chords Dominant 7th Chords Minor 7th Flat 5 Chords Diminished Chords Augmented Chords Suspended Chords |