The Major Scale #2: 5 Positions (Guitar Lesson SC-021) How to play

Justin's Completely Free Guitar Lessons, Complete Guide To Scales Lesson SC-021

All 5 of the common positions of the major scale and suggested fingerings and practice techniques for each.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/SC-021-MajFivePos.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

.

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.