Lesson 1: Scales (part 2)

Part of the first hour in me getting guitar lesson 1 covered looking at other parts of the C scale on the fretboard & scales in other keys.

At the end of this lesson I had some understanding on how to put a very basic solo in a specific key together and 'keys' in general had lost most of their 'terror' for me :)

Guitar geezer called the patterns below the '2nd position' but I've also seen it listed as 'Pattern 3' and 'Pattern 3 plus one octave * ' 

Before looking at the 2 images, sketched below, remember they are exactly the same shape/pattern but the second one is one octave (12 frets) higher up the fretboard and you are 'barring' (playing every note) on the 12th fret to make it the same pattern as you play on the ZERO fret (open strings).

Definitely worth spending time eye balling those until you 'see' they are exactly the same - just 12 frets up the neck / one octave higher.

Looking at that pattern (and the fretboard on your guitar) and working out what each note is in those shapes and the shape from the previous post, was for me, worth the time and effort. It helped me grok it a little deeper and it dawned on me that nothing is flat or sharp in C (I'm no music dude remember!). I'm guessing that is obvious to anybody who knows anything about music - but that's not me :)

A little Googling and it becomes clearer especially when viewed from middle C on a piano.

You can now solo!

So now you have, starting from your little finger on the 'C' on the 8th fret of the top 'E' string a simple starting point for a basic solo in the C major scale. That starting position is a 'root' note in the C major scale. You can pick notes out of the 2 patterns listed so far (the zero fret + 12th fret version and the 5th fret pattern from the last post) and away you go.

There are a couple of other patterns and notes that can be used to join up those 2 basic patterns giving you places to go to between those shapes. Geezer said don't worry about them for now "They are not so important"; but I printed em out and had a look at them anyway :)

Now what you need is somebody playing some cords in C major and you can begin your path to world domination :)

More on the cords next time.

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*  (an octave from a note on your guitar is from any starting position plus 12 frets higher, or lower I guess, and the easy one to see/hear is by playing any open string and then playing the same string on the 12th fret).

Once again its not black magic (I'm missing the magic now guitar is starting to make some sense!) and if you look at your single fat 'E' string from the open string (fret 0) to the 12th fret you are playing all the notes between the two 'E's: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E).