The Skool of guitar excellence
RockSkool: Scale Theory Part 1
It is important we have a basic understanding of scales at this point, and it is all about your ABC’s and being able to count and knowing your doh, ray, mi, fah, soh, lah ti, doh !
Let’s start with the MAJOR scale do our ABC’s! So if we start on the note A, the scale goes like this:
A B C D E F G and back to A
Doesn't matter where you start, you just follow your ABC’s until you arrive back at the starting note again. So if we start on the note E, the scale goes like this:
E F G A B C D and back to E
Now, in between this there are other notes that make up the CHROMATIC scale. Beginning at A, the chromatic scale looks like this:
These twelve notes are the chromatic scale, that is, ALL the possible notes from the A open string to the A at the 12th fret. Listen to the two A’s, they sound the same, they are the same note, but one is at a higher pitch, we call this an octave.
Try this exercise. On the 6th string or E string play a note starting with the open string, 1st fret, 2nd fret, 3rd fret counting all the way up to the 12th fret (usually marked with two dots on the fretboard)
The actual notes you have just played on the E string are as follows:
