Major Scales

Not every guitar player knows about the structure of chords and music.

You probably don’t need it to make some decent music. But it’s so much easier if you do know it. So, why not see what it’s all about:

A regular scale (which is also called the Diatonic Major Scale) consists of eight tones with the beginning and ending tone in the lower and higher frequency. For example the "C" scale (the only one to have no sharps and flats) includes the notes: C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C.

If you sing the "doe a deer" song to yourself, you’ll remember that it goes: "do (pronounced ‘doe’) re (pronounced ‘ray’), mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do."

This is the eight-tone major scale.

(If you played all twelve tones it would be called the Chromatic Scale).

The ‘do,re,me’ verbiage has become old-fashioned, and has been replaced by numbers in the modern music world. Now we have "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8." (I am personally more comfortable with the numerical system, and will henceforth use that instead of the do-re-me.)

The following is a table of all of the notes in the major scales.

You do not have to memorize this, but it’s a nice reference.

We will look back at it frequently:

note #

name

1

E

F

F#

G

G# (A^b)

A

B^b

B

C

C# (D^b)

D

E^b

2

F#

G

G#

A

A#

B

C

Db

D

Eb

E

F

3

G#

A

A#

B

C

C#

D

Eb

E

F

F#

G

4

A

Bb

B

C

C#

D

Eb

E

F

Gb

G

Ab

5

B

C

C#

D

D#

E

F

Gb

G

Ab

A

Bb

6

C#

D

D#

E

F

F#

G

Ab

A

Bb

B

C

7

D#

E

F

F#

G

G#

A

Bb

B

C

C#

D

8

E

F

F#

G

G# (Ab)

A

Bb

B

C

C#(Db)

D

Eb