Guitar Scale Patterns How
to use scale patterns effectively
This lesson will show you the various types of scale patterns
you'll come across when learning individual scales. The scales section
on this site provides you with the tools to learn scales across the
entire fretboard, but you need to be able to break these down for more
economical fingerings.
A good guitarist will make sure they not only learn guitar scale
patterns but also understand the positioning of certain tones within
the scale (e.g. the root, 3rd and 5th for major scales). This ensures
you have a safe reference point wherever you are on the fretboard, allowing you to move fluidly and musically through your solo.
Video lesson
Boxed
guitar scale patterns
When first getting to know a scale, you just need a pattern that will
let you explore the tones of that scale. Boxed scale patterns typically
span 5 or 6 frets wide, providing you with an economical arrangement of
the scale's tones
to work with.
For example, here's a natural minor scale boxed pattern...
And here's a boxed pattern for the Lydian mode...
As you can see, these types of boxed scale pattern are conveniently
accessible and memorable for those initial stages. I encourage my
students to use these boxed guitar scale patterns to get to know the
core intervals
of the scale they're learning. So don't worry in those early stages
about being able to play right across the fretboard, because you want
to first focus on tonality and the kind of flavour the scale offers
your music.
The lowest root note for these boxed patterns are on the low E string.
However, I also encourage students to learn the basic boxed pattern
rooted on
the A string, like below for the natural minor scale...
Learning both the E string and A string boxed patterns provides you
with a reference point around the two most common chord positions - E
and A form barre chords, which use the same low root note strings - E
and A.
This is why I provide both these guitar scale patterns in my scales
lessons. It
allows you to conveniently play the scales around the same chord
positions, or vice versa.
Once you're confident with the basics of the scale, and only then, it's
time to expand out of the boxes by using scale positions...
Using
scale positions to form larger scale patterns
Scale positions are about taking the degrees of the scale and building
patterns on each degree. For example, if we were learning the major
scale, we'd know it has 7 tones. These become degrees on which we can
build a pattern before connecting them all together to form one large
major scale pattern.
To do this, we need to first lay out the intervals of the scale in
question along the low E string. I'll stick with the major scale as an
example...
This particular example is in the key of G, because that's the note on
which the root
notes lie. However, you need to keep in mind all the
guitar scale
patterns we build are movable, and key independent.
Once we have our base intervals, we build a new boxed pattern around
each degree. I go through this process with you for each individual
scale in their "unboxed" lessons.
Once we have built patterns on all 7 degrees, we're left with a large
scale pattern divided into 7 positions as follows...
Now, what you'll find is that, within this larger pattern, you can
locate the root note positions
for both the E and A form boxed patterns you learned initially. If
you've spent time learning each degree's pattern, you'll know how the
tones of the scale are laid out in each one.
A good test of how well you've learned these positions is to try and
identify specific interval relationships, such as root-3rd...
Again, I help you out with this in the individual scale lessons.
The benefit of this process is that you don't have to repeat it for
every scale, because scales share certain intervals (known as common
intervals/tones). For example, all
major scales share that root-3rd interval. All minor scales share the
root-minor 3rd interval. Most major and minor scales share the root-5th
interval.
Master this concept and you'll be in a very advantageous position as
far as being able to identify key interval relationships in any given
scale and move fluidly between them over the entire fretboard.
Open
scale patterns
Sometimes,
you'll be down at those first few frets, for a lower register of the
scale you're playing. In this position, you'll need to know how the
open strings work as part of the scale.
Each string provides a
note. In standard tuning, that's E A D G B and a higher E. If any of
these notes are part of your scale, you can use the open strings in
your solo.
For example, if we're playing the E phrygian dominant
scale (also known as the Spanish scale), we could use the following
pattern...
The open low and high E strings provide the root.
The open A string provides the 4.
The open D string provides the b7.
The open G string is not
used because the note G is not part of the E phrygian
scale.
The open B string provides the 5.
So
make sure you spend time learning scales in different keys so you can
make use of open strings confidently. Remember that the notes provided
on the open strings are the same as the 12th fret notes, so if you
learn the pattern across the entire fretboard, you should be able to
see how the pattern continues from the open strings in the same way it
does from the 12th fret.
Learning scales across the entire fretboard is a huge (but very
rewarding) task, but it's also important to be able to isolate
particular patterns within this larger pattern to give you a good
framework for techniques such as runs.
For example, using our knowledge of the large major scale pattern from
above, we
could create an extended version of the boxed pattern we learned in the
initial stages...
Patterns such as the above can be referred to as 3 notes per string (see below video)...
This will allow you to improve your confidence with wider fingerings.
It's also a useful technique for when you're further up the fretboard
and the fret spacings are narrower, allowing you to play across wider
intervals on each string.
So while it's important to learn a scale across the entire fretboard
for fluid and unrestricted soloing, it's also beneficial to be able to
pull out sections within
this large pattern for more enclosed runs and
more
economical movements.
The idea is to ensure you have all the options you need to keep your
soloing free flowing and intuitive.
