Guitar Tutorial – Major Scales
This is a two part guitar tutorial covering major scales.
Major Scales
What you need: A guitar and 30 minutes of your time.
Keep away from children (or anyone else) demanding your attention. Take your phone off the hook, and turn off your mobile. Don’t let your spouse vacuum around your feet. Wire a shotgun to the doorbell. Understanding major scales is a critical step on your journey as a musician. They are a foundation component of music theory. My point is, major scales deserve your full attention.
Table of Contents
Scope
This will teach the fundaments of melody & harmony using a guitar. At the end of this tutorial, you will understand how to go about playing a major scale in any key. You will know how to form chords by extracting notes from a scale. You will understand enough to be able to create your own chord shapes anywhere on the fretboard and in any key. Not bad for an hour’s work!
Experience Level
An absolute beginner could use this tutorial on major scales, but it’s really for those who have some experience & playing ability. If you can play a major scale reasonably fluently, you are well qualified.
Method
The fingers learn slowly, and so need hours of repetitive practice. That is the nature of building all muscle memory.
The intention of this & subsequent tutorials is to gain maximum applied understanding from minimal study & practice. Note! The fretboard charts may appear upside down too many. The view is as of your own guitar, not the mirrored view of someone playing in front of you. Stick with it.
Part 1: Scales
Scales are foundation stones of both technique and understanding.
Table #1 shows all the notes within an octave. The top row (chromatic) consists of 13 notes from C to C inclusive. There are actually only 12 notes because the 13th is another C of course.
The blue highlighting shows where the 7 notes of the C major scale occur within the chromatic one. If we play these highlighted notes, we play the scale of C major.
The Pattern Of Intervals
The 7 notes of the scale are usually referred to as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. It’s easier to understand this way. There are two further points worth noting.
1/ All the notes of this scale exclude sharps (#). This only applies to the major scale of C. Think of them as the white keys on a piano.
2/ Of more importance is the pattern of intervals. Each column represents a semitone. There is no semitone ‘gap’ between the 3rd and 4th intervals. The same is true of the 7th and the octave (C).
This pattern of intervals defines a major scale:-
tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone
In the C major example in Table #1, you can see that the 7 notes of the scale are C, D, E, F, G, A, B. The 3rd = E, the 5th = G etc.
Using the above pattern of intervals as a template, you can play a major scale in any key. Your starting point will determine the key. The starting point is the 1 (or root note). You don’t have to learn what the notes are called, just remember the pattern.
Guitar Fretboard Charts
Below are three fretboard charts. They are for those that may want example major scales. The top two show the applied scale of C major at different octaves. The frets are numbered & the finger positions are shown. Finger position numbers 1 and 8 are both C, the 2 is the 2nd, the 3 is the 3rd, etc. The bottom chart is for note reference only. It shows all the notes on conventional guitar in concert tuning up to the 12th fret. Play the sequence through beginning at 1 and finishing at 8 (the octave).
Obviously, if you then want to practice a D major scale, just begin 2 frets (1 tone) further up. ie: begin at the 10th fret instead of the 8th.
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If you have found this tutorial on major scales helpful, please recommend it to your musical friends and consider sharing it on social media. Don’t keep it to yourself, spread the love! Ok, I doubt a tutorial about major scales will go viral, but many guitarists could do with learning some fundamentals either as a beginner or as a refresher, reminding themselves about the different scales. Major scales are the place to start.
So, please tell your friends!
Related Articles
Inspired by “Discover Your Discomfort”? If you want to find out more about playing or maintaining the guitar? If so, you can find articles and tutorials for guitarists on our Guitar Articles page.
You may also find these articles interesting:
Part 2: Major Scale - Chords
I hope you are enjoying the series and finding the articles useful. If you have any feedback about this article on major scales, please post your comments on the Songstuff Music Community boards.
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