Hey Friend,

Hope you had a chance to read that interview with John 5 from yesterday. There’s actually a lot of useful tips in there - it’s not just some guitar guy talking about how fast he can play riffs.

When we talked about intervals on Tuesday, we gave each interval a number. The perfect unison is the 1 note in a scale, the tonic, the starting point.

You may have noticed that as I gave each interval a number, it wasn’t exactly sequential. If it was, the perfect octave would have been lucky number 13. It is the thirteenth note, but in reality, it is also the 1 note.

The perfect octave marks the note that begins the next scale iteration, so I suppose technically you could say it’s not part of the scale, but since it has its own name, we do kinda hafta talk about it.

If you think about it, it does fill an important role because it provides resolution to the tension that is felt when you ascend or descend a scale. You can instinctively feel that tension when you listen to a scale, and hitting that octave note seems to bring relief. Try this:

If you look at your guitar, you probably have a fret with two dots instead of one. This fret marks the octave on a string. Play a string open (just pluck it without putting a finger on any fret), and that is a perfect unison note. 

Put your finger on the twelfth fret (the one with two dots) and play it. You’ll immediately hear that this note is the same as the open note except that its pitch is higher. 

Now, starting with the open note, play each note up the neck by sliding your finger up one fret at a time. Notice how you feel as you move up the neck. You should feel something nagging at the back of your mind, like you’re running from something and if you can just get in the door, you’ll be safe.

Hitting that octave note on the twelfth fret is going to give you that feeling of safety, like you can now relax - you’re home…

So we’ve really only got twelve pitches to worry about when we talk about a scale.

I mentioned the other day that if you play each successive fret up the next, you’re effectively playing a chromatic scale, but you won’t use that very often.

What you will use is a diatonic scale, which only includes seven of the twelve available notes in an octave. All the major and minor scales that you’ll see in Western music are seven note scales. 

What you have within these sales is five whole steps (two fret intervals) and two half steps (one fret intervals).

The patterns I talk about so often are diatonic patterns. That’s why we use the “w’s” and “h’s”:

Alright, I’ll be back tomorrow with more scale fun. Hope you have a successful day.

Peace~

Dave