G Major Scales


bluematty
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Joined: 02/09/17
Posts: 5
bluematty
Registered User
Joined: 02/09/17
Posts: 5
02/19/2017 9:10 am

Hi there,

Any easy question for you more advanced people.

In Guitar Fundamentals 1 there is a G Major scale in the 1st lesson of 'Let's Add the 3 rd String'.

After feeling pretty good about myself after mastering the G,C, and F Major scales along comes another G Major scale in 'Let's add the 6 th String'!!!

How many G Majors are there and how do you know which one is relevant at any given time?

Cheers


# 1
ChristopherSchlegel
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Joined: 08/09/05
Posts: 8,473
ChristopherSchlegel
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Joined: 08/09/05
Posts: 8,473
02/19/2017 4:13 pm

Hey, there! Glad you are working through the fundamentals with Lisa!

Originally Posted by: bluematty

How many G Majors are there and how do you know which one is relevant at any given time?

There is only one G major scale. But it can be played in many different ways & places on the guitar.

Lisa is just using the G major scale in a few of these possible configurations to show you what's possible on the guitar. And to give you an exercise that gets you used to playing across more of the fretboard, using gradually more & more strings.

Regarding how many you'll need to know, that depends on what style of music you want to play & your goals. If you want to play acoustic guitar & mostly singer-songwriter type tunes, then you might only need to know how to play a major scale on the lower strings in order to play bass notes to connect or walk between chords.

However, if you want to add a melody or fill, you might need to know major scale patterns on the upper strings as well.

And if you want to play any rock or blues, then you'll definitely want to know scale patterns across the fretboard, high & low!

For now, just follow the course & practice the material. The instructors are good at giving you just the amount of theory that you need at any given time, then giving you a lot of practice at applying it to make music. :)[br][br]Have fun!


Christopher Schlegel
Guitar Tricks Instructor

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# 2
bluematty
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Joined: 02/09/17
Posts: 5
bluematty
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Joined: 02/09/17
Posts: 5
02/20/2017 10:41 am

Thanks mate. That clears it up a bit.

I'll continue with learning to walk!


# 3
david.wagle
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david.wagle
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03/01/2017 3:54 pm
Originally Posted by: bluematty[br]How many G Majors are there . . .[br]

I apologize for the length of this post, but your question points to a standard issue: not understanding what a scale is in and of itself.

So, let's back up and just take part of your question: what is a scale?

A scale is an ordering of notes that cover an octave.

An octave is just the space in the sound frequencies between two tones where the rate doubles. Sound travels in waves, and frequency measures how many wave peaks and valleys happen in a span of time. The scale usually used for measuring frequency is the "Hertz" scale. One hertz (abbreviated Hz) is equal to the passage of the top of one peak to the summit of another peak over the period of one second.

1 Herz is a low frequency, so low that the human ear can't hear it.

Human ears can distinguish sound between the range of approximately 20 Hz to 20 kHz (a kHz is 1,000 Hz).

Low E on the guitar is 82.41 Hz, and high E is 329.64 Hz

The E on the fourth string and the second fret is 164.82 Hz.

So the first scale you can play on the guitar is the one which covers the range of 82.41 Hz to that frequency doubled or 164.82 Hz.

Similarly, the first G scale you can play covers the range of about 98 Hz to 196 Hz. Any ordered series of notes that cover that frequency range is called a "G scale." Any frequency that is a multiple of 98 Hz and a multiple of 2 is a G note. The name is just what we call those tones due to historical reasons.

Regardless of which G one starts on, it is G scale. We call it G because we name the scales based on the name of the first note. (There's an important distinction between a note and a tone, the tone we usually call G is also A double flat and F double sharp, for example, and one can write a scale based on any valid musical name for any particular tone.)

Now, it doesn't matter what the different intermediate notes are if the first note is a G, it is a G scale.

For tonal music, we break up the frequency distance between the doubling of frequencies into what we call "half steps." These are chosen to correspond with particular geometric relationships between the wave shapes over the distance of the scale. In tonal music, there are always 12 half-step tones that make up the range of an octave. These tones have 15 common note names. For example, the same tone that is a C# note is also the note Db.

In G, these would be G, G#, A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, and the final G.

Note, that we use sharps to name the notes in the G scale because G is a scale that naturally has #s in the key signature. A scale that has flats in the key signature would use flats to name the notes.

These relationships result in a particular sense of consonance (notes that sound good together) and dissonance (notes that sound in conflict together) which lead to a consistent experience of the notes which make up any scale.

An example of this is that a note which has a frequency approximately 80% of the way between the scalar distance is known as the 5th of the scale, and has a strong consonance with the root tone.

The scale that uses every interval is called the chromatic scale.

Any combination of notes of the chromatic scale is a "valid" musical scale.

So, for example, the scale "G, G#, B, D#, E, G" is a "G" scale. It may not be a very useful or common, but it is still a scale. The notes are ordered (in alphabetical order wrapping around from G to A, with each note appearing only once and covering one octave.

Some scales are extremely common. They appear over and over in music and are so useful that we gave them names to avoid having to spell out the scale each time we wanted to use it.

One such common pattern is the major scale.

As you probably know, the major scale has the particular interval pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step.

If you count up the intervals (2 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1) it equals 12, so you know that it covers an octave. The odd example scale I gave above also has 12 intervals (1 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 3) and you can see it adds up to 12 as well.

Now, on the guitar, each string has many intervals, a 24 fret guitar neck covers 2 octaves (24 being equal to 12 x 2). Since the strings are only a few intervals different from one another ( in standard tuning they are five half steps different except the G string to B string which is four), there is lots of overlap for playing notes in various locations.

High E for example, is playable in six different places on a 24 fret electric guitar.

Any one of those high E's is just as usable as any other for using a scale.

Across a fretboard, any given note will appear five times in various octaves.

These two facts combine to mean there are many of ways to play any given major scale.

For a G major scale, for example, you can play it as follows:

6th string 3rd fret, 6th string 5th fret, 6th string 7th fret, 6th string 8th fret, open 4th string, fifth string 7th fret, 6th string 14th fret, 4th string 5th fret.

Now, that fingering is not exactly useful in most contexts, but it is a way to play the G scale starting from low G and ending on the equivalent of the open G (third) string!

This property of the guitar can make it quite challenging for new players, but it is also one of the features of the guitar that make it very useful in many musical contexts. The flexibility to move your scales around the neck gives you easy access to playing different combinations of notes and chords.

I hope this explanation was useful.

Good luck!


# 4

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