It’s time for one more exercise! Let’s test your knowledge of the Major Scales.
View the full lesson at Recalling Major Scale Notes | JustinGuitar
I’m finding these exercises vey useful, along with Mr Cato’s diagram. Starting to get faster at figuring scales, takes far less time than I thought 
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Wish I could say the same, but I guess I’ve not put enough concentrated effort into it. I’m guilty of understanding the method but not practicing enough. I can go through the notes of C, G and D forwards, but really struggle to do them backwards. 
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I resemble your difficulty here. I have been pretty busy and burnt out with work, so spend more time lately doing what feels good. Playing songs and practicing techniques. I have been slack in studying things that require thinking, like cord theory and actually learning new things. Come spring, I will pick it back up (he tells himself…).
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As a old person, I feel like these exercises are worth it to stave off senility 
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Feels so good to feel enthusiastic about learning and studying, which I haven’t felt in a long time. Even if I don’t ever get that good at playing guitar, this is time well spent. I love all the little epiphanies that occur going through this course. Thank you very much.
Stephanie
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I’m defiantly enjoying Cato’s key signature trick! Once you get it you get it. My next step is to put some of them to memory like Justin suggests “Start with the easy keys - those with less than three sharps or flats.”
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Oi. This is much harder than I thought. I breezed through the worksheet exercise when I could write the notes in letter order. But as soon as I tried to go through the notes on the fretboard without a cheat sheet, I am getting messed up at B/C and E/F every time. Doing a sharp root note sequence is fairly easy, but the flat root notes are so difficult for some reason! And I play piano! So frustrating!
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Are we supposed to have learnt the Major Scales from the worksheet by this time?
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I’m not sure what you’re asking Stuart … learned the formula? The notes for each of the 12 scales?
I’m not sure now either!! Too far away to worry about it 
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Very cool formula that Mr. Cato taught you! I got them all right on the first go. Now to try and memorize them may be harder I think.
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I’m not sure how to go about memorizing scales and keys. I can think of several ways, but none of them stand out as easy or obviously useful. I’m not sure how I will get my recall fast enough to use real-time while playing. Building the various tables of note sequences is trivial with pencil and paper, but there is so much once you add in modes and other scales like pentatonic and blues.
I can think of the following ways to memorize this:
- offset from root note - this benefits recall while playing i think, but a lot to remember and then associate offset with note letter
- interval - this is what I see Justin generally showing us, but takes iterative steps to mentally calculate, so very slow to recall in the moment
- brute-force memorization - I think there is too much when considering all the scales and then each key. A quick mental calculation suggests around 1300 tables for just the western scales I mentioned already. hmm.
- Fretboard positions - Again, this seems like a large number of positions to remember, but certainly less than the brute force method. Might be easy to remember positions, but then ignore note names which seems a bad idea.
- Am I not thinking of some method?
- Maybe there is a handy way to combine the above methods to streamline the mental processing?
- Am I jumping ahead in the lesson plan and just need to be patient?
- Maybe I only need to concentrate on the mode/scale I prefer to play in and that limits the size of the task to something manageable? (just the major scale seems like too much)
Ideas welcome!
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Hello Michael,
What has worked, and still is working for me after 3 years, is the following;
- Initial use of mneumonics to start building knowledge of keys.
- Learn the notes on the fretboard
- Learn intervals - this is key I believe
4.Train your ear.
Work on exercises that develop and consolidate the above, in a practical way. Its a continual process. For me, EVERYTHING builds from here.
I think too with scales, it appears, from my observation, that there’s too much emphasis on patterns. They are important for sure, and have helped me immensely, BUT scales are not patterns - they simply produce patterns. Scales are collections of intervals. I think Justins emphasis on " learn the SCALE, not its pattern" is sage advice that appears to be missing from many other teachers. Once you really learn the scale, you’ll start finding all the patterns, rather than actually " learning" them.
Cheers, Shane
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How are you thinking of the intervals? Interval from root or interval from previous note?
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Yep, always from the root mate, whether its scales, chords, triads, arpeggios etc.
Cheers, Shane
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From the root as Shane said. I learnt position 1 of the minor pentatonic scale as 1-4, 1-3, 1-3, 1-3, 1-4, 1-4 like everybody does. I.e. which finger goes down on which fret for each string. That’s a great way to get the pattern burned into your brain, but it tells you nothing about where you are in the scale. I’ve recently started noting which interval I am playing as I play the scale.
So now I say to myself “root, flat third, fourth, fifth, flat seventh, root, etc…” as I play through the scale. The advantage being, if you wan’t to focus on chord tones when soloing, you know where they are. I recently started adding the “blue” note to my blues improv. It’s the flat 5th. If you already know where the 5th note is, you know where the “blue” note goes.
Knowing the intervals between the notes for the different scales is handy too. E.g.
Major pentatonic: T, T, TS, T, TS
Minor pentatonic: TS, T, T, TS
So for minor pentatonic, fret the root note, move up 3 frets and you’ve got the next note in the scale. Then 2 frets, 2 frets and three frets. Handy for one string solos, or just working out what the notes are in the scale for a given key.
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Interesting. That is what I would think of as “pattern” and not interval.
The minor pentatonic interval from root would look like Root, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 as semitone offsets in my bullet point above.
I can see an advantage in using pattern method since when a chord sequence changes, you can just think in the new pattern options for the new chord. I can see this being possible even if I don’t know the note names.
How do you handle a song in a different scale? Wouldn’t you need to learn a new set of patterns for each scale?
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No, the patterns are movable. First finger on E string 5th fret you are playing the A minor pentatonic scale (assuming pattern 1- the one I listed previously). First finger on 8th fret you are playing the C minor pentatonic scale (pattern 1). The intervals are the same for a given scale, regardless of the key. Only the notes change.
To be clear, you still need to memorise the shape of the pattern by rote. When you no longer need to think about that, you can start to visualise the intervals.
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1-4, 1-3, 1-3, etc… IS the pattern- which fret on which string. The intervals (R, b3, 4th, 5th, b7th) start from the root note. For pattern 1 of the minor pentatonic scale, the first note is the root. That isn’t always the case for the other patterns.
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Memorise in what way?
The way to play on guitar? If yes, your fingers will do that in repeatable and movable shapes, starting with 5 CAGED patterns built up gradually over time.
The notes within each? Guitarists tend to stick to A, C, D, G, E keys so there’s no need to get bogged down worrying about all 12.
The point of a formula and a reference guide is to delegate some of the effort of remembering and using the tools to figure out what you need when you need it. Over time, and with usage, memorisation will come.
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