Weekly Newsletter #50

July 21, 2022

How well do you have your scales mastered? 

And no, I don’t mean can you play them from beginning to end, backward and forward. 

What I mean is, do you have ultimate freedom in using that scale to improvise and play freely in any key? 

The odds are you may have that ability with a scale or two, but it might be limited to one or two positions or keys…maybe more, maybe less. 

However, in order to truly have the freedom we all want as guitarists, it’s vital that we master the scales we plan on using. 

Obviously there are the most common scales one would use to play most Western music: Major, Minor and Pentatonic. This is really only the tip of the iceberg however. 

You may have a really solid grasp on those, or you may not. If you do, try applying this concept to more exotic scales such as: Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, the 7 Major Modes, or really any scale you can imagine. 

The technique I’m about to show you can be used to master any scale, in every key, and in all positions, whether vertical, horizontal or diagonally across the fretboard. 

Step 1 - Think In Scale Degrees 

The best way to conceptualize scales so that they’re easily transposable into any key is to think of the notes as scale degrees, rather than letter names. 

What this means is that if you were to take an A minor pentatonic scale, instead of thinking of the notes: A-C-D-E-G, you should think: 1-b3-4-5-b7. 

Thinking this way allows you to easily move to any starting note and begin your scale from there. If you took that A minor pentatonic and decided to play Eb minor pentatonic you won’t have to waste time thinking about all the flats involved in this new scale. 

You might say, “I can just shift my Am box up to Eb and don’t have to think at all”. 

Yes, you can do that but then you’re completely unaware of the notes/scale degrees you’re actually playing. This means that you have no idea on what note you should end or begin a phrase in order to line up with the chord being played beneath it. 

This is how you get that all-too-familiar “searching” sound, as players stumble around a scale shape hoping to land on a good sounding note. 

Instead of hoping, you should learn the scale degrees of the scale you’re trying to master so that you can say something like, “The chord is a Bb7 and I’m playing an Ebm pentatonic scale, I can therefore highlight the 4 and 5 of the scale because they are chord tones”. 

Knowing what notes within a scale coincide with the underlying chord is what provides masterful understanding of the scale. 

The way to get that skill in every key is to convert the letter names to scale degrees for ease of transposition. 

Here are a few examples of this: 

Major: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 

Minor: 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7 

Minor Pentatonic: 1-b3-4-5-b7 

Major Pentatonic: 1-2-3-5-6 

Dorian: 1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7 

Mixolydian: 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7 

You can take this and begin them on any note and the scale degrees will be the same. 

Step 2 - Stop Practicing In Step-Wise Motion 

Step-wise motion is when you play a scale in numerical order either forward or backward. 

The reason you shouldn’t do this while practicing is because this isn’t how you’re going to play. 

Playing a scale from beginning to end, in order, sounds extremely boring and has almost no musicality at all. Real phrases are made by skipping notes, repeating notes, and taking the scale and twisting it in various patterns. 

So this is how you should practice. 

A great way to start is by taking some simplistic patterns and running them through one position of the scale. 

For example you could play a major scale using this pattern: 1-3/2-4/3-5/4-6/5-7/6-8. 

But then you also have to practice that pattern backwards as well: 8-6/7-5/6-4/5-3/4-2/3-1 

This example can be seen here in the key of C: 

However, you can just as easily move this pattern to any key and the pattern and scale degrees will remain the same. It is also much more interesting and can be used, either in part or as a whole, as part of a melody or solo lick. 

This pattern, when broken down, consists of playing a note, skipping the next note and then going back and repeating that process starting on the note you skipped. It can be applied to any scale, regardless of the number of notes. 

Applying this to a minor pentatonic scale (1-b3-4-5-b7) would look like: 1-4/b3-5/4-b7/5-8(1) 

Playing this over the entire Am pentatonic box in position V would look like: 

There are many other common patterns that occur frequently in music and can be utilized to master a scale. 

Here are some of them in context of major scale degrees (remember, the pattern can be applied to any scale). 

3 up, 1 back: 1-2-3/2-3-4/3-4-5/4-5-6/5-6-7/6-7-8 

4 up, 2 back: 1-2-3-4-2-3-4-5-3-4-5-6-4-5-6-7-5-6-7-8 

4ths: 1-4/2-5/3-6/4-7/5-8 

Remember these should be patterns practiced forward and backward and in multiple octaves and positions. In fact, everywhere you find the starting note on the neck, it’s important that you are able to play these patterns easily. 

Step 3 - Creating Patterns 

Once you are able to play through the standard patterns in whichever scale you are working on, it is necessary to challenge yourself by creating patterns that don’t include every note in the scale. 

In fact it is actually much better for your musicality and the ability to visualize the scale if you only include certain scale degrees. 

The way to do this is to take a scale, in this case the Major Pentatonic, and simply map out the scale degrees to start: 1-2-3-5-6. 

From here you can come up with any pattern of numbers using those five digits. You can even repeat numbers. 

For example, you might use: 1-1-5-3. 

If that is your pattern you then go to the starting note of the key you are practicing and play that pattern. If this were done in A major pentatonic it would look like this: 

From there you would then shift every scale degree one digit over, so that instead of starting the next four-note pattern on 1, it would begin on the next scale degree in line: 

1-1-5-3 

2-2-6-5 

3-3-1-6 

5-5-2-1 

6-6-3-2 

This way you end up playing this pattern beginning on every note of the scale. 

Breaking down this pattern you would notice that from the starting note, its skips two notes ahead (to the third note) and then goes back one. 

Applying this to a Minor scale (1-2-b3-4-5-b-6-b-7) would look like this: 

1-1-5-b3 

2-2-b6-4 

b3-b3-b7-5 

4-4-8-b6 

5-5-2-b7 

b6-b6-b3-8 

7-7-4-2 

Beginning with the same numerical pattern (1-1-5-b3) results in a different overall pattern of outlining the triad of every chord beginning on the root, then 5th then 3rd of that chord. Another way to think of it would be Up 4, Back 2. 

This process can be done by simply coming up with any sequence of numbers that exist within your scale. Remember, try various combinations; sometimes repeat a scale degree, use three, four, five or more scale degrees per pattern. The combinations you can come up with are nearly endless. All of which will lead to greater mastery of that scale in that particular position. 

Applying this advanced stage of mastering a scale, in a musical manner, not only will force you to visualize the scale, but it will instill many useful patterns that will reshape how you look at the fretboard. 

In addition, this process has the added benefit of being inspirational in creating melodic motifs that can be used for songwriting or soloing. 

Best of all, this method can be applied to any scale or mode regardless of the number of notes. And you will easily be able to transpose it to any key! 

There are many more ways of developing this series of steps and I encourage you to experiment with new ways of challenging yourself and creating patterns that will test your knowledge of the scale and fretboard. 

-Max Rich