Scales - Major Scale

For a long time I didn’t realize how important scales were. My playing has always revolved around chord forms learned from chord charts over the years. I was able to pull out occasional solo riffs learned through hearing melodies without much understanding how it is derived in the context of scales.

One day a good friend of mine mentioned about using scales to dramatically improve guitar skills. I admit I was skeptical about it but because he plays good guitar, I somehow took time to research about it. And right as he is I found it a lot helpful. Thus the reason why Im blogging it, first, I need some sort of journal as I try to improve myself and secondly, some budding guitarist might find this blog and might also be inspired like me to keep the strings ringing rather than give up to despair.

Learning scales is daunting at first. Just like learning everything else you have your falls and frustrations which sometimes lets you give up. But learn it with patience and passion and everything will follow through. Just always remember to keep yourself always want to hear the notes on your guitar.

LETS START!!!

To learn scales you need to know some basic things:
12 different notes: C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B
Measures or durations: Whole step (W) and Half step (H).
Whole Step (W) means two intervals of notes. e.g. C to D, G# to A#, B to C# etc.
Half step (H) means a single interval between notes. E.g. E to F, B to C, D# to E etc.

We need this terms in order to properly understand different scales. We will examine Major Scale first. By the way, id like to be speaking in layman’s terms as much as I can so I’ll be using plain terms rather than musical jargons that could confuse plain readers and myself J.

Major scales have the step formula of W W H W W W H

Lets choose C as our root note. Root note is the first note you have on your scale, in deep musical sense it is the root note that is the central label of perception upon which the melody is built upon. But forget it right now, lets not delve into deeper meanings yet. Im sure I will blog about deeper things later as I mature into music. For now lets concentrate on building Major Scales.

W W H W W W H
C D E F G A B C - C Major Scale

W W H W W W H
D E F# G A B C# D – D Major Scale

It’s that simple. Now try building the rest of the major scale using the step formula.

Afterwhich we start to ask, so what’s in it for us. How do we use it. Ok, I have the whole guitar neck below with all the notes that belong to the C Major Scale. The picture shows only the twelve frets but remember they repeat themselves after number twelve fret. So 0 and 12 are the same, so as 1 and 13, 2 and 14 and so on and so forth. So if you have a 24 fret guitar you can imagine the first 1-12 fret mapping to be the same as the 13 to 24 fret mapping. Going back on how to use it, based on personal experience if you happen to play a C major chord you can use any of the note within the C major scale below to solo over the C major chord.

Let’s take these notes on the scale (see image below). As you can see this is a C major scale taken at the 5th fret. Try playing the C major chord and pick these notes one by one in tempo with the C major chord playing in the background. You can make your own pattern to try to articulate the scale. You can also try to vary the speed of the picking but remember to keep the harmony intact.
You must remember that you have the freedom to choose any note that falls on the scale not just the example above. You may start with the 3rd fret or the higher frets etc. No limitations as long as you are in the scale. You will find that you wont fall apart harmonically if you are within these notes. I wish I could put in a video or an audio clip that would clearly describe what im talking about but im new to blogging and I still don’t know how to do it here, so I’ll save it next blog I can come up with.

This is not the only scale you can use. There are a lot of other scales you can use for any type of musical genre you prefer. There’s minor pentatonic scale (my favorite) for rock music, diminished scale for jazz , blues scale for blues music, etc. etc etc... I will surely be covering all these one by one in the next blogs im going to post. But major scales is a very good start for your solo skills. You wont have to wonder anymore how those guitar gods pick their way on every melody they play. For the meantime, lets keep on practicing……. Rock on!!!!