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