SCALE PRACTICE part 1

The major scale is the foundation of all western music. You could think of the major scale as an arrangement of notes that sound ‘friendly’ (consonant) with each other. The notes that fall outside the scale could be heard as ‘unfriendly’ (dissonant) notes. If we learn and improvise on this scale, the music we play will sound ‘right’ so to speak immediately. Notice all the notes or intervals are numbered 1 to 7. We do this, so we can communicate with other musicians very quickly. For example if you said to a piano player “this intro is a 1345 in C”, that player will know you mean “play the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th note in the C major scale”.

You can move the major scale pattern wherever you like on the guitar and change the key of the music your playing. If you start your major scale on an F note your now playing in the key of F major.  The first scale we learn runs laterally along the guitar on one string. We learn this one first, so we can see all keys are really work the same. They just start on different notes.

First learn the major scale along one string as shown on the diagram above. This scale can be played on many places on the guitar. This example is played from a C note so we call it the C Major scale.

Play the C major scale over this track. First try to play a note to every second click, but then when you’re more confident try a note per click.