YouTube guitar lesson (Lauren Bateman) explaining what a major scale is and how to find one on the guitar fretboard. Presents the interval formula for major scales (whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half), demonstrates applying it to C major (single-string B string example) and F major (low E/string example), and notes the solfege syllables (do–re–mi…).
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And in this lesson video, I'm going to be answering the question, what is a major scale? And how do you figure out what it is for each scale? So let's get into the lesson video.
So I often have students ask me a question. Hey, you know, what is a scale?
Like, how does it work?
How can I find these scales? So what I'm going to go over in this video is how we find a major scale. This is. Now, there's lots of different types of scales. You can have major scales, you can have minor scales. And basically the difference between all these different scales is the actual spatial relationship between the notes. So what do I mean? So do we have one note between the next note? Is there two notes? Is there three notes? Okay, so ideally, when we're talking about the major scale, we're working what we call half notes, whole, whole steps. So half steps and whole steps. A half step is one note. So if I'm on this top string, this first fret on the top string, this is my F note. And when I go F to F sharp, that is a half step. I just went up one note. When I go from F to G, you'll see I skipped over a fret. I went from fret one to three. We call that a whole step. So a half step is moving up one note and a whole step is moving two notes. Alright, so that's really all you need to know for how we're going to navigate around these different major scales. So what we're going to do, we're going to start on the top fret or, sorry, the top string. But I'm going to give you a little bit of a formula that you can follow along to figure out scales all over the neck of the guitar. So the formula is whole, whole, half, half, whole, whole, whole, half. All right, let me repeat that again and then we're going to apply it. So don't worry about what am I talking about. Just know the formula is whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. So let's show you how we're going to apply that. I'm going to leave that diagram up there so that you guys can see. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this video so far.
This.
Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. This way you'll get to see more videos just like this one. Let's get back into the lesson. All right, so I said I was going to start on the top E string, but actually I'm going to do. I'm Going to do it on the second string. First fret, we're going to start with the C note. So we're going to do a C scale. And C scales are usually easy because if you're, you know, if you have a piano, the C scale is all the white keys on the piano. So the notes in a C scale. And I'm going to show you how I found this. But let me tell you the scale first. It's going to be C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then back to C. Okay? So the notes in a C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. So let's start with our C note. So I'm going to start with this C note on the B string here. So it's going to be the first fret on the second string. So I told you that this formula was this weird thing called hold whole half whole whole whole half alarm. What the heck are you talking about? Let's see. Alright, so we're on a C note. So to get to our next note we have to move a whole step. That means we have to move up two notes. Remember I said a whole step is two notes. So we're going to move up from the first to the third fret. This is going to be our D note. Okay? So we went from C to D. Now we need to move up a whole step again. So we're going to go from D up two frets, all right, or two notes to E. So we have a whole step.
Whole step. Now we said the next note or the next part of the formula was a half step. So we're only going to move up one fret here. So we're going to go from E to F. Okay? So so far we got C, D, E, F. Alright, So I am on the sixth fret of that second string. So we did whole, whole half. All right. And now we have to do whole again. So we're going to go from the sixth fret to the eighth fret.
All right, so we're on our G note. Then we're going to go 8 to 10. We need another whole step. Okay, that's going to be our A note and then we need another whole step. So we're going to go 10 to 12. 12 fret is going to be our B note. And then to wrap it all up to get back to the octave, the higher C, we have to go half step to C. So it's going to.
Be C, D, E, F, G, A.
B, C. All right, so we have.
First note Whole, whole half. Whole, whole, whole half.
Do you see how that formula comes into play now? So it's kind of cool. And you can do this anywhere on the guitar. I'm just doing a single string so that you guys can see the layout. But you can do this between strings as well. But I'm just going to do it on single strings so that you guys can see this whole half layout. Let's go down to the bottom string now. So we said that this first note here was F. Okay? So let's do it again so that we can apply it. It's always good to practice these things. Go over them multiple times so that you can figure them out. So I want to figure out what an F major scale is. So we have an F note. We need to go up a whole note to G. We need to go up a whole note again to A. We need to go up the half note. So now we're on A sharp. Okay, so we got F, G, A. Now half note, A sharp. Okay, now we're going to go up a whole note. So we're going to be on C, C. Then we need to go another whole note, D, then another whole note, E. And then a half step, F. And you'll know if you did this correctly because you should end on the note that you started on. So we have F, G, A, A sharp, C, D, E, F. All right, so that's how we would find that scale. So there you go. That's how you find what a major scale is. What the notes are in a major scale. And like I said, this works anywhere on the guitar starter in a note. Whole, whole half. Whole, whole, whole half. Use that formula. It's going to be seven notes and.
It'S do, re, mi, fa, so la ti, do.
That's kind of out of my range, but again, you got it. So that whole sound of music doe a dear thing. There was a reason for that.
So we have do, re, mi, fa, so la ti, do.
And there it is. So that there's the scale so that we call that solfege in music when you say do re mi. But these are the scale, the C scale.
So C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. So we have the first.
Note, the second note, the third note, the fourth note, the fifth note, the sixth note, the seventh note and the octave. Alright, so the major scale has seven notes, all of them. So now you can go find all 12 of the major scales. Because there's, there's 12 notes in the musical Alphabet. So each one of those has a scale that is built off of it. So go try and find some of those scales and hopefully it'll open up a little bit of your knowledge of the fretboard as well as you go along. I hope you guys like this video. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you can see more lesson videos just like this one. YouTube is going to pop up a couple videos over here. Make sure to go and check those out and hope to see you guys in another lesson video.
