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Hi, how you doing? Justin here again.
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In this lesson we are going to be talking
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about the 5 positions of the major scale.
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I'm going to take you through each
position
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the way that I play it.
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Different guitar teachers and different
guitar
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players have different opinions about what
the correct
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fingering is for the five positions.
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Some guitar players use another system
called 3
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notes per string in which there are 7
positions.
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However, most guitar players I know seem
to agree
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that the 5 positions system is the best
one.
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There is no right or wrong with the
fingering,
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the fingering I'm going to show you is the
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fingering that I've worked out that I
think is logical,
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that suits me, just if your guitar teacher
or
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someone you know plays it a different way,
that's
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totally cool, I'm not trying to say that
you should
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do it this way, but if you don't have an
opinion,
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this might be a good one to start off with
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You'd probably only change it if you could
come up
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with a logical reason why you should
change it.
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So we are just gonna go for a close-up now
on the
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left hand and just do each different scale
position
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starting with position one.
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All of these scale shapes are on my
website
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which is www.justinguitar.com so you might
want
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to go and check that out, either download
the pages
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or print off the scale shapes.
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So, yeah, I'll see you in a few seconds
with my left
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hand, thanks Jedi!
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Okay, so here we are for position one.
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Position one we start with the second
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finger and play up the scale.
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Guitar Scale Playing
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Come back down
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Making sure we start and finish on the
root note,
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also making sure that our fingers curve
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up as we go up the scale.
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Guitar Scale Playing
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Okay, now we are moving up to position two
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Move up to here, up to the fifth fret.
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Following me here Jedi?
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Okay, so now for position two, the root,
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the lowest root note is right up here on
the forth string.
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Even if it seems a little but strange, I
think it's very
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important that you start up here on the
root note.
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The reason is that you will hear the major
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scale the, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do
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idea if you start on the lowest note all
of the time,
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you tend to hear the modes which can be
useful,
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but right now you're learning the major
scale.
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So we start here with the second finger
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Guitar Scale Playing
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Slight position shift here
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Back down the scale
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Now at this point, 4th finger on the way
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down and 3rd finger on the way up.
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Now, I'll just explain that odd fingering
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here because this is a little bit unique
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to me.
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Uhm, I got it off my old teacher.
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Thanks John Mc Millan, great stuff man.
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Uhm, and if I try and reach over here with
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my third finger you can see that the angle
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of my hand has to move to reach it.
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You don't really want that, especially
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when you start going faster.
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It makes it quite a pain.
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It's ok slowly, but once we get quicker it
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makes it really awkward.
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So, this way we use the little finger
there
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because the little finger is already in
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the right place to go.
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We follow up here a little bit, and that's
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a really easy transition to make to your
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first finger.
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Now we could just cramp up here again with
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little finger, but it gets a bit squashy
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so we use our third finger still there.
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Our first finger can always reach back
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without the, you can see the flat of my
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hand here is not having to move anywhere
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for my first finger to reach back.
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Cause you always got more flexiblity with
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your first finger.
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So.. [plays scale]
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Making sure again that the fingers round
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up when they get to the top and making
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sure you watch out that funny note that
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changes between the fourth finger and
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the third finger. [Plays scale]
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Ok, now we move onto the third position.
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Ok, we there still with me Jed?
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Jed: Right on
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Cool Mate.
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Ok, now this one. Root note is under
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the little finger.
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It's pretty straight forward for the
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fingering this time.
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Each finger gets allocated it's own fret.
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Start with the little finger.
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[Plays scale]
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Pretty straight forward again.
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Making sure you start on the lowest root
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note. Up as far as you can.
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Down as far as you can, and back up and
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finishing on the root note.
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Ok, now we go onto position 4.
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Just a little farther up the neck now.
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K, this time we're starting with the
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second finger. We're playing here.
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[Plays scale]
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Again, starting and finishing on the
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lowest root note.
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Really important.
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[Plays scale]
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It's worth noticing as well that if you're
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playing these scales with a metronome, you
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probably want to get up to four notes per
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metronome click.
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And if you follow the scale shapes that
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I've got, you'll see that every scale form
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has three notes on each string except for
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one string which has two notes on it.
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I think that makes a total of seventeen
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notes.
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And what that means is if you play the
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scale up and down that you'll always end
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up back on the root note for the beat.
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[Plays scale]
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You can see that I accented each group of
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four then and started and finished on the
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same note.
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Ok. That was position four.
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Now we're going to move up to
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position five. Right up the neck now.
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Starting with our little finger on the 6th
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string.
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Play up the scale. [Plays scale]
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Ok now, on this girl we've go the same
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little trick as we had before with the
third
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finger on the way up and the 4th finger on
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the same note on the way back down.
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[Plays scale]
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Ok, so please, what's really, really
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important. After you've finally got those
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5 positions down is that you remember what
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I said originally in the lesson 1 for the
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major scale.
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It's really important that you can use the
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scales.
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Don't learn lots of scales and not be
able
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to use them. There's absolutely no point.
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So learn position one.
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Learn to do a solo using the position one
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scale.
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Then learn position two and then start to
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join position one and position two
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together.
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There's hundreds of different ways of
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doing it. You can slide between them, you
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can shift between them.
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It's really a good exercise just to sit
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down and start playing one and try to get
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into position two and back.
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[Plays scales]
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Just trying to combine position one and
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position two. Once you feel really
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confident that you can combine positions
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one and two, then you'd add the third
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position and start to combine position one
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with postion two into three.
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[Plays scale]
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Etc... And keep joining them together.
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Don't just sit there and play the scales
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up and down. It's really, really just a
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not happening thing.
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Ok.
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In the next lesson, I'll show you some
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ways to break up the major scale. Into
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making it sound like music instead of it
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sounding like a scale, so I'll see you for
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part three in a minute.
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Cheers. Take care.