How a Computer Science Engineer sees guitar music — the Major scale
After my discussion over the very basics of the music, the first bit I would like to share is a fundamental one: the Major scale.
No brainer here, right?
Actually, there is more to the staff than it meets the eye: the harmonic intervals. If you see the staff, you can’t evaluate the distance between each note and that’s one awful representation design flaw of the staff, to me (cringe).
Harmonic intervals are so important because, for ANY scale:
- they’re what identifies the scale itself (i.e., you can tell one scale from the notes used);
- where its flavour (heavenly, dramatic, arabic, spanish, gypsy, hellish, bluesy, etc.) stems from.
In the picture below, you see how the intervals are put for the Major scale.
You MUST know the notes on the fretboard, period. But I don’t yet.
I just don’t have time to practice, so I created my way to see the Major scale over the fretboard, in a graphical form for G.
It may seem some E.T. drawing but it’s just another way to see the Major scale boxes (like shown here) and to me it’s just more “memory-friendly”. Here are some additional hints:
- the dots indicates the root note, their positions is the most important thing you have to take into account when playing and modulating with other major chords…;
- …and the other way around, depending on where your hand is playing, get the nearest root note and the drawing will come up (at least it does for me);
- every note that is in red is in the scale, everything else is out (but it doesn’t mean you cannot attempt it, #breaktherules);
- Mind those shapes resembling greek letters, the φ (Phi) and the Y (Upsilon); they hit the high E string respectively at the I and the IV grade, use them as landmarks;
- When you play it you always have to consider a minimum of 4 frets, don’t play along one shape at a time, but rather two or three of them (e.g., if you’re playing in B- at the 7th fret you can modulate to Gmaj7, by simply visualising that Y and the vertical lines closed to it).
The first way you’d want to use the Major scale is to play along with some background tune on Youtube.
Improvise: double, bend, hammer on, pull off notes…insert pauses…you’re free
You’ll notice at first play , that you play just right throughtout all the chords. While practicing, you’ll tend to get over and over the same notes, on the same chords and yet they give you satisfaction and comfort.
Hundreds of hours listening western music and the scale itself rejoice.
Major Scale Boxes
In this part of the story, I’ll try to show you how I broke down the whole keyboard in boxes, for focus and for quick chords changes.
You see I cut down the whole picture into 7 boxes. There’s a LOT more to be said on these boxes and I’ll write a story about it. The purpose of it all is to memorise the whole scale and you should try to see the boxes as connected.
Some general notes:
- You may also notice that all the boxes have the same 7 notes that spin around;
- Each box has, on the sixth string, the relative grade of the major scale, so for G, Box1 has the G, Box2 A, Box3 B, etc… this is helpful to keep in mind to set you in the right spot
- Box 3 and 4 are very much the same, as are Box1 and Box7
- Box6 is drawn awfully, just mind that on the third string you have the major seventh as I depicted on the 12th fret
Some playing (mechanical) notes :
- Boxes are vertical, so put one finger for each fret of the keyboard (each box spans for four frets, one per finger), you may need to move on fret forward your wrist (for example I do it on Box5)
- For Box1, Box4 and Box5, put your middle finger on the first note, you’ll be more comfortable
Now, some exercises:
- On the background song above, try to change the box you play on in time, so in this case cycle through Box1 (G), Box6 (Em), Box4 (C) and Box5 (D)
- Take a metronome, set it to 90bpm or thereabouts and practice on each box, back and forth (i.e. from string 6 to 1 and back)
- Once you do it flawlessly three times, then add 20bpm to the metronome and start it all over again, up to 200 bpm
- Then take metronome back to 90bpm, play Box1 up, Box2 down , Box3 up… all the way up to Box7, changing boxes in time
- Once you do it flawlessly three times, then add 20bpm to the metronome and start it all over again, up to 200 bpm…eheh
- Change key and start all over again…EHEH
- Take a root note and find the lowest note in the major scale (either E, F or F#), play the whole keyboard form the corresponding box. So for instance, take C as the root note, then you can start using Box3 on E and walk through the keyboard up to Box2 (on D, 10th fret on the sixth string)
