Hey Friend,

Now that we know a little about notes and intervals, it's time to begin turning them into something.

You learned about the chromatic scale - that it is made up of every possible note available to us. You also learned that it's a good scale for exercising your fingers, but not too usable when it comes to making music. So let's look at a scale that is...

As I've said, if you want to construct chords, you have to understand a bit about the components that make them up. The major scale is going to give you the notes you need in order to build many different chord forms, the major chord being the most critical and most used.

The major scale has a very distinct sound to its pattern. Instead of all twelve notes from the chromatic scale, it's only going to use seven. The intervals used are specific and contribute to the overall feel of the scale.

 

It has a feel of taking a walk up a set of stairs, and each interval plays its part to lend to that feel...

If you count the number of semitones between each note, you'll notice that each note has a tone (two semitones or frets) between itself and the next. That is, except for the major third to the perfect fourth and the major seventh to the octave. Both of these are a single semitone, only a one fret shift.

Here's where it gets interesting. It doesn't matter what you root note happens to be - every major scale will sound the same in relation to its tonic. Start with a C note and play the C major scale, the scale itself will have the same stepping sound as if you played a Gb major scale. Major, is major, is major when it comes to scales.

This allows us to use a very simple pattern, which if you memorize, will set you up to be able to play any major scale. Here's the pattern:

Tone  Tone  Semitone  Tone  Tone  Tone  Semitone

You may also see it written out like this:

Whole step  Whole step  Half step  Whole step  Whole step  Whole step Half step

When you write out the number of frets, it's like this:

R  2  4  5  7  9  11  12

Start on the root note, which is the tonic from the key. Up two frets is your major second, two more frets to the major third then one fret to the perfect fourth. Two more frets up to the perfect fifth, then two frets to the major sixth. Slide up two more frets for the major seventh, and finally one fret to the octave.

If you were to play a major scale on the open A string (fifth string), you'd end up playing an A major scale. Here's how to play the A major scale on a single string:

Make sense? I'll put some charts together that give you a better visual. 

See ya'll tomorrow. 

Peace~

Dave