The Skool of guitar excellence
RockSkool: Scale Theory Part 2
Any MAJOR scale we talk about is made up of 8 notes from this chromatic scale (including sharps and flats), to form the familiar - doh, ray, mi, fah, soh, lah ti, doh , that we all know. 8 notes that take us back to the note we start on. Although it is now an octave higher in pitch the starting and finishing note will sound exactly the same.
We will show later how to work out the sharp/flat notes in particular scales.
You will also notice that all the notes of the chromatic scale have a note in between (either a sharp or a flat note) with the exception of B-C and E-F that have no note in between. Again, no matter which letter you start at, you continue your ABC’s, put a sharp note in between every note, except when going from B-C and E-F.
Let’s start with the note A at the 5th open string and play up the chromatic scale again.
Note how the B-C and E-F occur in the same order as before, this is true no matter what note you start at, the notes will always follow this pattern….so take time to learn it!
A sharp (#) raises a natural note by a half step (1 fret) towards the next note of the scale. You should also know that sharps occur going up the scale and flats occur going down, but they are both the same note, so for now we will just refer to sharp notes in the chromatic scale.
So between each set of notes ( except between B-C and E-F) there will be a sharp/flat note. (e.g. the note between F and G is F# or Gb, they are the exact same note just with a different name)
