Scales have a vast importance to music, and music theory. They aren't just important for soloing, but provide the basis for music theory as a whole. Our knowledge of scales can be used to enhance our knowledge on chords, chord progressions and intervals as well as giving us a foundation to truly understand the guitar.
A scale is a group of notes, ordered in sequence of pitch. Scales are typically player individually, often in ascending order (going up the scale, increasing in pitch) or in descending order (moving down the scale decreasing in pitch.) What the scale is, is determined by the intervals between the notes of the scale. In this guide, we will cover the Major Scale, which will have the same intervals between notes in any key you play in.
The major scale covers all seven notes of western music (A,B,C,D,E,F,G). It is diatonic, meaning it contains 5 whole steps (2 semitones/frets) and 2 half steps(1 semitone/fret). The pattern to create the major scale is:
Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half
We can also shorten it as:
W - W - H - W - W - W - H
Using that pattern to create a scale, means we need to pick a root note, then follow the pattern, jumping the required semitones to get the notes of the scale. For example, using the D Major Scale, if we list out all twelve notes we have:
D - D# - E - F - F# - G - G# - A - A# - B - C - C# - D
Then we can follow the pattern.
