I started my guitar journey 1 year ago and realized that some theory will help me improve my playing. There are chord shapes, minor pentatonic patterns, major and minor scales patterns etc. Most can be found on JustinĀ“s amazing webpage. What would be very helpful for me is something like a big cheat sheet that I can put next to my guitar, helping me to remember a certain pattern without having to look it up on the webpage (usually not knowing where to start).
I found a good ressource here (Reddit - Dive into anything) but some of the patterns differ from Justins. Wouldnt a cheat sheet be a great addition to Justin`s Tools?
Justinās goal is to teach you how to play guitar. Learning scale patterns is part of the learning process. Cheat sheets are a crutch and donāt help in the learning process.
You should be learning and using these pattern one at a time.
I understand what youāre saying, but in the long run, learning the intervals on the fretboard will give you far greater knowledge, understanding and practical application. Make the intervals your goal, rather than the patterns. In this way, you become your own teacher, and the learning starts to compound pretty quickly.
The scale patterns, chord shapes etc are just a reflection of these intervals at work.
Absolutely nothing wrong with having some diagrams here and there, especially in the initial stages; but Iād be using them as a temporary measure for confirmation purposes of your own construction.
This is a small cheat sheet I printed off and placed on a music stand. Itās from JGās website, but I added some coloured boxes to emphasise how the patterns overlap and to show the relevant CAGED chord within the pattern. Note, the numbers on the top patterns are finger numbers and those on the bottom pattern are the interval numbers. [ mod correction - scale degree numbers, not interval numbers - see a similar misunderstanding addressed here
So why do we go to strings 3,2,1? strings 6,5,4 give you the do, re mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. isnāt that the end? why are we continuing on the other strings.
Within any given fret span (say frets 2-5 for the G major sale pattern 1 E-shape) there sit more than one octave span of the G major scale itself.
Including the lowest available sale note of F# (fret 2 of the 6th string) to the highest available note of A (fret 5 of the 1st string) the scale spans:
F#, G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, A
17 scale tones in total.
All CAGED scale pattern shapes have 17 scale tones.
The scale patterns blend and merge together giving across the entire guitar fretboard a huge scale span of notes.
Why limit the options when thereās so many notes from low to high?
I have no idea honestly. just trying to get a handle on the bare basics. justin starts the lesson by stating the major scale is do re mi fa so la ti do, but then continues on past the ādoā for many more notes (that dont sound anything like do re mi). my first rodeo with theory past grade 1 and 2.
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do is one octave starting and ending on the same note with an octave between them.
That last Do can represent the end of one iteration and the start of a new iteration in a continuous chain or loop.
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
Do can represent the end and start of ocatve cycles of the major scale endlessly for many repeats.
ā¦ Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do ā¦
@LesPaulMoreRay think of a piano. The white note span 6 octives but only contain 7 notes. The 6 strings of the guitar used in the scale pattern is 2 of those octives plus a few extra note to complete the pattern.
Scales, whether major or minor, are defined by the intervals between the scale degrees. If you recall the major scale pattern, it goes like this beginning from the root note:
T - T - S - T - T - T - S
C major scale: C D E F G A B (C)
If you compare the scale diagrams against this formula, you will find that the notes fretted with the 1st finger cannot be the root notes of the given major scale. For example, check the intervals in pattern 1 starting with the lowest note indicated on string 6 and going up one octave:
S - T - T - S - T -T - T
Notes of the C major scale: B C D E F G A (B)
Does this look like the major scale? Yes it does, although the last semitone interval has been moved to the beginning. Since only natural notes are played, it cannot be anything else but the C major scale. However, the first note played was B - it is part of the scale, but not the root note.
Hello Stein. Thanks for subscribing to Justinās Music Theory course, and welcome to the Community.
Good question.
The red for root note is a universal convention - you will very rarely see a scale pattern without the root note being shown in red.
Also, as you learn more scale patterns, you will come to know that the lowest possible note is not necessarily the root note.
Plus, as you come to learn each scale pattern in turn, you will elarn and practice and play it starting and ending on a root note so the knowledge will become embedded.
Supposing you simply wanted to be able to figure it out without a guitar in hand but with some prior knowledge about the major scale. I shared some diagrams in a post above (it is definitely worth readng this topic from the first for a lot of useful information) that could help.
This shows the notes of the G major scale (repeated) with the interval spacing shown below - the major scale formula.
Here is a neck diagram showing the first 12 notes of the G major scale on just the low E string (the neck runs out of frets after that). It also shows the intervals as Tone or Semitone below the diagram.
Here is the full G major scale pattern 1 with green lines between the notes showing Tone or Semitone. There is an issue when the pattern jumps from one string to another but the concept should be clear enough to understand.
I think there is a small mistake in the last graph, shouldnāt we have a tone after the E on the 2nd line?
As usual, your explanations help a lot, thank you!
If you use the scale diagram for the major scale pattern 1 with the scale degrees notated and color the 3rd and 5th scale degree along with the red colored Root note, then the E shaped barre chord is obvious. Also if you have the 3 scale degrees of the major scale colored in the major scele pattern 1, then you also have an arpeggio note pattern (movable) for that scale pattern.
All of this became clear last week when I did an exercise of coloring (by hand) the 3 triad notes all over the neck for the 5 CAGED major chords beginning with the C chord:
The neck diagram for the G chord shows the notes for the E shaped G barre chord in the 3rd fret clearly visible and you can visualize the G major scale pattern in the same frets.
(Correction: key scale note should be key scale degree)
At first I thought that this was introduced too early since it goes with the grade 4 major scale maestro lessons, but then I remembered that this is useful to know for the lesson on chords in keys in grade 3 module 20. The lesson is called āChords in Key - Theory-freeā, but later it says that you can gain more understanding by looking at the Theory course, which is this lesson.
