Scales

• Minor & Major Pentatonic Scales • Blues Scale • Major Scale • Natural Minor Scale

The Pentatonic Scale• Musical scale with 5 notes • All scales we’ve dealt with so far have been

‘heptatonic’ ie. they had 7 notes in them • To get the sound of the pentatonic scale, play all

the black keys on a piano • The most common scale in Blues and Rock, but

also found widely in Jazz, Pop, Metal

How to Learn• For our style, I recommend learning shape 1 like the back of your hand • From there, learn the top 5 notes of shapes 2 and 3, then notes 5 - 9 of

shape 4, and the top 4 notes of shape 5. When comfortable with these, learn the bottom 6 notes of shape 3 and then connect that to the notes you learned in shape 4.

• Now you have the whole neck covered with the most useful shapes, with the ‘filler’ eliminated. I have found this to be the most effective way to learn the pentatonic for our style of music and this should cover 90% of pentatonic licks you will hear.

The 5 Shapes• For the sake of completion, I will provide you with diagrams for all

five shapes of the Pentatonic Scale. However, within those shapes, I will highlight the most important notes that I’ve spoken about in the previous slide. These will be highlighted in red. The additional important bass notes will be marked in blue

• Feel free to learn all five shapes of course, I just like to break things down as far as possible without losing out on anything important

• I will be providing all shapes in G Minor Pentatonic - simply move these to the appropriate fret to change key

Shape 1

Shape 2

Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5

The Pentatonic ‘Boxes’Again, the five pentatonic shapes, but this time, with only the notes I

would consider ‘essential’ learning. Start here to break down the pentatonic into their most useful and important parts.

I call these the ‘boxes’ as opposed to the full shapes

Shape 1

Shape 2

Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5

Major Vs Minor Pentatonic• Exact same scale shapes and notes, just three

frets down. • The ‘Tonic’ note is different in both • Major generally will sound ‘sweeter’ and more

‘perfect’. Minor will sound more ‘raw’, grittier, edgier, more ‘rock’. This does depend on the harmony (chords) behind the scale however.

The Blues Scale• The Blues scale is the exact same as the minor

pentatonic scale with one extra note which is the flattened 5th note of the original natural minor scale.

• This would be the note a semi-tone down from the fourth note in the pentatonic scale.

• This gives it 6 notes in total, and so is known as ‘hexatonic’

• This is mainly used for a ‘Bluesy Sound’

Shape 1• The extra ‘Blue Note’ in each scale is marked in

Blue in each scale shape

Shape 2

Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5

The Major Scale

• The basis for everything we’ve learned so far, but it’s not widely used as a ‘scale shape’ in and of itself.

• We will mainly use the three-note per string shapes to play the major scale

Shape 1

Shape 2

Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5

The Natural Minor Scale• The natural minor scale of a key is the exact same

as the major scale of the key three frets below eg. The natural minor scale of Am is the exact same notes and major scale shapes as C major

• This scale is otherwise known as the Aeolian Mode (more on modes later…)

• Has a ‘sad’ feeling to it, in line with the sound of it’s underlying minor key

Three Notes Per String• There are 7 shapes of 3-Note per String scales • The idea of these scales is to simplify learning

scales. The idea is that if you know that on each string there are three notes, as opposed to either 2 or 3 in traditional major scale shapes, it will be easier to memorise each shape

• It is meant to be a more intuitive approach to learning the major scales

The 7 shapesLet’s take a look at the 7 shapes of the 3-NPS major scale. The suggested finger numbers are noted, and the Root Note is marked in red. These shapes are in the key of G, but if you want to change them to a different key, just start note 1 of shape 1 on the root note of the key you want to play in and move the other shapes up accordingly.

Changing the keys and calculating the correct frets will take a little time to start with. Be patient with this and learn off the main keys first. I’d suggest starting with G, C and E. Then calculate the rest based off of those.

Shape 1

Shape 2

Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5

Shape 6

Shape 7

Modes• Each major scale can be ‘used’ for 7 modes: 1. Ionian 2. Dorian 3. Phrygian 4. Lydian 5. Mixolydian 6. Aeolian 7. Locrian

• At it’s most basic level, a mode is simply just playing the major scale of a key over different chords in that key. It also involves emphasising the first note of that chord in

the scale • Remember that if you take a note, and find all 7 modes

based around that note, you’ll actually be switching into different major scales, the key of which depends

on what scale degree that note is in the key • All keys have 7 different modes, but they are modes of

each of the scale degrees in that key not of the key itself eg. The key of C has C Ionian, D Locrian, E

Phrygian, F Lydian etc

Example• Let’s take the note C, and find each of the modes of C

Mode Major Scale

Reason?C Ionian C The Ionian mode is based on the first scale degree. The first

scale degree in C, is, of course C

C Dorian A# The Dorian mode is based on the second (minor) scale degree. The second scale degree in A# is C minor

C Phrygian G# The Phrygian mode is based on the third (minor) scale degree. The third scale degree in A# is C minor

C Lydian G The Lydian mode is based on the fourth scale degree. The fourth scale degree in G is C

C Mixolydian F The Mixolydian mode is based on the fifth scale degree. The fifth scale degree in F is C

C Aeolian D# The Aeolian mode is based on the sixth (minor) scale degree. The sixth scale degree in D# is C minor

C Locrian C# The Locrian mode is based on the seventh (diminished) scale degree. The sixth scale degree in C# is C (diminished)

Arpeggios• Arpeggio is just a fancy word for playing through a

chord, one note at a time • The main difference between Chords and

Arpeggios, note-wise, is that Arpeggios are played in ascending order ie. 1, 3, 5 and chords can generally be structured in any order

• We will use the CAGED shapes we learned earlier to look at 5 different Arpeggio shapes for each chord