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Guitar: Lesson 16
The Five Scale Patterns
By Zack Cart
Prerequisites:
You
should be able to understand and perform the concepts and techniques outlined
in the following lessons before attempting this lesson:
Guitar: Lessons 1-15
Music Theory: Lessons 1-11
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We
have not truly revisited scales since the first several lessons. In this
lesson, we will swiftly gain a massive amount of scalar fretboard knowledge.
There will be much practice involved, but you will hopefully find that,
although the concept may be relatively new to you, the actual fingerings and
fretboard patterns will be somewhat familiar.
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This
lesson will consist mainly of fretboard diagrams, each detailing the left hand
fretting of each of the notes of the major/minor scale in a given position. The
notes will be designated by their degree relative to the major scale, but
remember that the same patterns are also applicable as minor scales or diatonic
modes. To jar your memory, I have included a major/minor conversion table
below, which shows the degree of one listed along side the degree of the same
pitch in the relative minor scale.
|
Degree in Major |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Degree in Minor |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
Again,
remember: the degrees given for each note in the below patterns are the degrees
for these notes in MAJOR.
SCALE PATTERN 1

SCALE PATTERN 2

SCALE PATTERN 3

SCALE PATTERN 4

SCALE PATTERN 5

Learn each of these patterns, and you will have learned the major/minor scale system across the entire fretboard! Once you are familiar with each of them, notice that they fit together into a loop. For example, the right hand side of Scale Pattern 1 is just the left hand side of 2. Therefore, you can slide up from pattern one into pattern two with very little effort. Notice how the same scale degrees are arranged in the same shape on the right of one and the left of two? That's because it's the same part of the scale!
Two and three fit together the same way, as do three and four, four and five, five and six, and six and one. In this way, learning these five scale patterns means you have learned all twelve scales in every portion of the fretboard, due to our favorite aspect of guitar playing- movable shapes!