Guide to the Major Scale
Scale Construction - The Major Scale
As mentioned in the previous section, a scale is a clever way to travel between two octaves. If you start on the note of 'C' and play every natural note until you reach the octave, you will have played the 'C Major scale', and the notes are as follows:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C |
As you can see from the above scale, there are 8 Notes in a major scale, The first and last being the same. This is where the term 'Octave' comes from, OCT = 8. The first note of any scale is called the ROOT NOTE or KEY.
When you hear someone ask 'What key is this song in?', then they are asking for the first note of the scale. Now, going back over what you learnt in the previous lesson, you should be able to derive the 'W/H' Step pattern for the Major scale from the notes listed above. If you can't go back and revise the previous section.
After deriving the 'W/H' pattern from the above 'C Major' scale, we get the following STEP pattern:
So, the formula for creating a Major scale is:
W-W-H-W-W-W-H
(W = Whole step, H = Half Step)
From this pattern, we can derive the major scale for any key. The Major scale for the key of 'D' is:
D E F# G A B C# D
The Major scale in the key of D# is:
D# F G G# A# C D D#
Learn this Pattern well. Now, go and write down all 12 MAJOR scales, using the 12 notes of the CHROMATIC Scale as the root. When applying this concept to the guitar, it is vital that you know your way around the fret board. Its no good being able to derive a Major scale, if you cannot play it on the guitar.
The diagram below shows the location of every note on the fret-board that is part of the C Major scale, (Square notes represent the root note of C). As you can see, the major scale for the key of C can be played in lots of different locations.
C Major Note across entire
Fretboard
Single
String Sequence
Single
String
Sequence #2
Across
the Strings
Across
the strings #2
Combining
both methods
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