Major Scales

Major scales is by far the most important and yet basic scale in music. The major scale is described by many people a happy and upbeat scale. It can usually be found in popular music heard on the radio and even in trash music. The reason why we choose to start with this guitar scale is that most people would have heard this familiar scale sometime in their lives.

Let us take the C major scale for our example in this guitar lesson. The C major scale is comprised of the following notes: C D E F G A B C.

C Major Scale

That’s all there is to it for the C major scale. BUT wait a minute, you might have a question. “How did I get the notes in C major scale to be C D E F G A B C and not some other random notes like C D# E F# G# A B C?”

Simple. All scales follow some sort of formulas. To get the major scales, we use the intervals WWHWWWH. (W = Whole tone and H = Half/Semi-tone).

Let’s take a look at the illustration on how this works. Let’s use the C note on the 2nd string as our starting note. The root note is highlighted in a red circle.

Now, you can apply this formula to any note. Let’s take G as the 1st note of the scale in this case. Going by the formula, the 2nd note is a tone higher (W) and this gives us the A note. The 3rd note is a tone higher (W) than the 2nd note which gives us the B note. Going on, the 4th note is now a half-tone (H) higher than the 3rd which gives us the C note. So on and so forth. You’ll arrive at the G major scale comprising of the following notes : G A B C D E F# G.

Major Scale Exercise

For an exercise, I am going to illustrate one 1 position of the C major scale on the fret board. This pattern is also know as Three-Notes-per-String scale and is played up and down the strings. Using alternate picking, practice this exercise using a metronome set at a comfortable speed. In time, not only will you be able to memorize the pattern, you will also improve your finger coordination.

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The beauty of this major scale pattern is that if you apply this exact shape to any starting note (e.g. 5th fret) on the 5th string, you instantly have the major scale of the starting note (e.g. E major in this case).

In the next lesson, we are going to touch on the different shapes of the major scales across the fretboard. Stay tuned!