The major scale is root of all western music. So it always astounds me just how many guitarists try to avoid it like the plague. A good grasp of this scale can stand you in firm stead for most musical situations! I’ve played just about every type of gig going and this scale has been at the fore in every single gig. So the best advice I can give is get good at major scales as soon as possible!
Now this first article is merely a nipping of the toe nail of the little toe into the lake of major scales but I hope to show you that with in a scale like this we have the potential for both cool sounding runs and neat arpeggio ideas, all of which are long standing favourites of the guitar soloist.
In these few examples I have used the C major scale, for the simple reason as there are no sharps and no flats involved so it makes it easier to see in both tab and standard notation.
Example 1
The major scale ascending and descending starting and ending on the root note of C. Why? Just so you can get used to the sound of it.
Truth is you know this sound better than you think as you hear it all day long. TV jingles, pop music, nursery rhymes, Church Bells, all melodies derived from within this scale. It’s a bit like our alphabet. It’s always being used in just about every conversation or written word, we just don’t think about it.
Example 2
Same notes…..just a case of repeating them in a sequence, I like to think of this as up 3 from every note. All that happens is that we get a kind of rolling extending to the scale so it seems to be longer but in fact is just the same group of notes on the same frets, but takes us back to those heady days when guy’s like Randy Rhoads and Gary Moore used to play big long runs !
Example 3
A harmonized major scale in triads. ( a what???!!!) simple terms….. I’m making chords from each of the notes in the scale then playing them as arpeggio’s. ( arpeggios: think Hotel California, Final Countdown, Sultans of Swing etc). In this particular case C major gives us a bunch of cool arpeggios and really what i want this exercise to demonstrate is that scales , don’t have to sound like scales. This lick can sound quite angular depending on how you phrase it.
Well that’s all for this time, have fun with this for now, explore the sound.
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[…] construction of the major scale but for further and more detailed information please look at “Introducing the Major Scale” by Richie Jovie and “Scales - Major” by Paul […]