Scale Fundamentals

What are Scales?

Scales are simply collections of notes used in music. We call a set of notes a scale when we extract the notes from their musical setting and arrange them in order from a starting point. When left in their musical context, these same notes are called a key. So scales and keys are essentially the same thing. The difference is simply an issue of application—you can think of scales as the theoretical “residue” of music.

Why are they important? Having an understanding of scales will greatly enhance your overall musical development. It will help you to spontaneously improvise solos as well as to develop better relative pitch discrimination (and the associated skill of learning music “by ear”). Furthermore, you will find that different scales evoke different moods, and certain scales are common to certain styles of music.

Eventually, you will learn to recognize the scales purely by their distinctive sounds.

In a nutshell, understanding scales, their interrelationships, and their tonal construction is the essence of learning the fretboard.

Two Sides to the Story

Scales have two different and important aspects: tonality and modality.

Tonality refers to the pitch of the starting note, or “root” note. For example, A major and G major demonstrate two different tonalities. Different tonalities may also be called simply “different keys.”

Modality refers to the relative structure of the pitches based on a given root note. For example, A major and A Phrygian describe two different modalities both beginning on the same pitch of A. Modalities may be referred to as being different “types of keys.”

So any scale or key requires two things to be specified—a starting pitch (tonality), and a type of scale (modality). When a player says a certain song is in the “key of A,” this could in fact mean A major, A Mixolydian, A minor, etc. In practice, the modality—or type of key—is often understood based upon the style.

Further Down the Road

Many styles of music may blend or borrow between modalities. The blues, for example, commonly utilizes a minor pentatonic (or blues) scale played over a major-type background. I mention this simply to emphasize the fact that scales are not inviolate “rules” that must be obeyed. They are simply useful collections of notes that may be blended or modified as needed. But of course, we must first learn the scales separately before we start combining them!

How to Learn Scales

This book can function as a reference, where you look up a particular scale and learn its fretboard pattern as needed, but it is also structured as a “scale method.” That is, if you start at the beginning and learn each scale in the order presented, you will find that they build in a logical and systematic sequence.

Learning these scales is a process that will take some time and practice. Don’t pressure yourself to learn them too quickly, as this will only cause you to confuse one with the next. Instead, spend enough time with one pattern until you can play through it repeatedly without mistakes. And play slowly! This isn’t a race. After you are comfortable with a given scale, continue to review it from time to time, even as you move on to memorize the next scale pattern.

Now a word about how to practice scales. Obviously one can simply play up and down until the pattern “sinks in.” However, repeating a scale ad nauseum is generally not a particularly effective strategy because the amount of repetition required is often more than any sane person can take! Therefore, it is best to apply a variety of approaches. Here are a few ideas to keep things a bit more interesting:

• Start with the lowest note and add one note at a time, cycling ever higher and higher until you are playing up and down the full scale pattern.
• Sequence the scale ascending and descending in groups of two, three, and four, etc.
• Playing to a metronome, improvise within the scale while maintaining constant eighth or sixteenth notes. You may draw upon sequences, make contours, or skip notes, but don’t leave the scale!

Some of the possible sequences are demonstrated on the first few scales. Of course, you should continue to apply them to each of the scales presented.

Finally, it is important to realize that for scales to ultimately be learned effectively, you must see them at work in real life situations. Then, you will really know them! All theoretical knowledge, including scales, is useless without application. So it is recommended that as you progress through this book, you learn enough music, songs, and/or solos to see some application of these patterns. If this is difficult for you, you may find it beneficial to seek out private lessons with a teacher who can help you recognize real musical applications for each scale.

Reading Fretboard Diagrams

The scales in this book are presented using fretboard diagrams that work like a picture of the guitar neck. These diagrams reflect the neck from the player’s view. That is, they show the same string and fret placement that you see when you look down at your guitar neck (high E string on top, low E string on the bottom).

The dots, or inlays, on the neck of your guitar appear on frets 3, 5, 7, 9, and double dots appear at fret 12 (one octave above the open strings). Then above the twelfth fret, the same pattern repeats. In diagrams, these dots are replaced with the actual fret numbers.

Smaller portions of the fretboard diagram are often used to focus attention on a certain area. For example, the diagram below depicts just the area of the neck between the fifth and ninth frets.

Dots are used on the fretboard “grid” to indicate the fingering locations notes. Root notes are indicated by circled dots.

A Word About Fingerings

Fingerings are never “written in stone,” but it is generally a good idea to select one and stick with it for a given scale pattern.

Positional Fingering

Positional fingering is a good starting point. This means that each finger gets one fret and plays all notes in that fret. The position number is the fret number of the first, or index finger. For example, the scale shown at the bottom of the previous page (A minor pentatonic) is in fifth position. The C major scale shown at the bottom of the following page is in seventh position. One special case is open position which is synonymous with first position.

Position is not always the lowest fret used in a pattern, but rather the lowest fret of the majority of notes in the pattern. So if all notes are in eighth position except one note on one string which lies on the seventh fret, the pattern is in eighth position, not seventh position. Simply stretch your index finger back one fret when required.

“Blues” Fingering

An alternate fingering approach common to pentatonic-based styles which incorporate a lot of string bending (such as blues and rock) favors fingers 1 and 3, or the index and ring fingers. This often requires an extra stretch here or there, and can be viewed as a modification to the positional approach.

Shifting-Type Fingering

Some scale patterns will require sliding, or shifting, the hand position, so that two different notes on the same string are played with the same finger. Specific directions will indicate how this can be best achieved for each pattern on an individual basis. Additionally, other scales may involve the use of a “floating position” where the pattern begins in one position, then on a particular string, the position shifts into a different position. This happens, for example, in diatonic three-note-per-string patterns.

Construction Basics

Historically speaking, the major scale is the fundamental scale in Western music. It is a diatonic (seven-tone) scale formed by a specific sequence of whole (two fret) and half (one fret) steps. It is easiest to remember the sequence if you view it as two “whole-whole-half” patterns, separated by a whole step.

When this is applied to a string on the fretboard, the major scale emerges. Below, the starting note (or root) is C, so this is a C major scale, played all on one string.

The steps of a major scale are numbered 1–2–3–4–5–6–7. (The octave root may be shown as either 8 or 1.) Half steps appear between tones 3–4 and 7–8. All other steps are whole steps.

When the major scale is “collapsed” and played across the neck rather than on a single string, the common single-octave major shape below emerges. Play it in seventh position. (Notes on the 7th fret are played with your index finger.) The root note—C, steps 1 and 8—is shown with circled dots.

Other tonalities are formed by shifting the whole pattern to begin on other root notes, but the relative spacing and the numbers for any major scale always remain the same, and reflect each tone’s intervallic relationship to the root.

All other scales may be viewed as being alterations of the major scale. For example, the minor pentatonic scale (a common five-tone minor scale) omits the 2nd and 6th steps, and flats the 3rd step (a minor 3rd) and the 7th step (a minor 7th).

Below, the minor pentatonic pattern is shown starting on the note C. Notice the three-fret intervals between the root–♭3rd and 5th–♭7th. These give the pentatonic scale a distinctly more aggressive character as compared to the diatonic scale.

When played across the neck, this common single-octave minor pentatonic shape emerges. Play it in eighth position (notes on the 8th fret are played with your index finger).