This 1 Major Scale Exercise WILL Change Your Playing FOREVER!

hey there guitar Fanatics if you were to ask me what the most important thing is for a developing lead guitarist to learn and start to gain some Mastery over I would answer immediately that you should learn the major scale forwards and backwards inside and out but what does it really mean to master a scale if I sto to think about what knowing the major scale means to me I'd obviously think of the notes of the scale but also that there's Triads and seventh chords associated with each of those notes not and there's modes associated with each of those notes and all the different possible fingering patterns for all of those things but here's a simple question for you and if your answer is no then you really need to watch this video if I picked a key and I picked a random note from that key anywhere on the guitar neck and I asked you without hesitation to start improvising from that note over a chord progression from that key could you do it would you get stuck would you have to stop and think about it if that's the case well then you really really don't know the scale well enough yet but check it out I think I've come up with the perfect practice exercise to truly help you ingrain and master the major scale we've got some work to do and I can't wait to get started because I know it's going to improve your guitar playing exponentially I'm Charlie long thanks for checking out the channel let's play some guitar perfect practice exercise huh Charlie I realize that's a big claim but here's why I'm saying it without blinking an eye this one exercise will help you not only learn the Triads of a major key but once you learn it you're going to be able to transition from Triads to the notes of the major scale anywhere on the neck instantly and fluidly I say this all the time just memorizing a finger pattern is not knowing a scale your knowledge has to be functional and this exercise is going to give you that it's going to take a little work on your part but the payoff is going to be huge so let's dig into this exercise we're going to be using the G Major scale here's some quick down and Dirty music theory the major scale and this is any major scale has seven notes G major has the notes G A B C D E and F sharp we could also call these notes by the numerical place they have in the scale the root the second the third the fourth the fifth the sixth the seventh we build the chords in the major scale by taking every other note let's start with the root the third and the fifth and we stack those three notes together to form what we call a Triad we can do that with each of the seven notes of the scale and in a major key we'll get three major Triads three minor Triads and a diminished Triad we get a major Triad if the middle note is four Frets above the first note like this in the G major Triad with G B and D we get a Minor triad if the middle note is three Frets above the first note like in this A Minor triad with the notes a c and e and the diminished Triad is made up of notes that are all three Frets apart now the examples so far are showing the notes on just one string for an easy visual but obviously we don't play the guitar like that so let's get our exercise going by moving the denote of the G major Triad to the a string and we have this shape and the first variation of the exercise is to play the Triad g b and d and then go to the next note in the G Major scale which would be the E note at the seventh fret of the a string and play the scale back down to the starting note g at the third fret of the low E string next we have a pair of minor Triads we have a minor and B minor so Play The A Minor triad and we would go to the F Shar above the E note and play back down to a play the B Minor triad go to the G note above that FP play back down to [Music] B next we're going to have two major Triads C and D play the C Triad go to the a note and play down to C play the D Triad go to the B note play down to the [Applause] D the next Triad would be E minor we're going to play that Triad we're going to go to the C note above the B here and play down to the E and then the seventh Triad in the key is F sharp diminished so we play that Triad and we go to the D note and play down to F sharp and that brings us back to our root the G major Triad so we've gone through the entire major scale and the Triads were major minor minor major major minor diminished major and I'd want you to practice this first variation of the exercise until you can play it smoothly and uninterrupted like this all the way up the [Music] [Applause] neck and that's variation one now we just played on the low E and A strings But ultimately I'd want you to be able to do that exercise on any two strings now here's G A minor and B minor on the low E and A strings but we could easily play those on the A and D strings or the d and g strings now we don't have time in a YouTube video to go through all the positions on all the strings but if you really want to master this stuff ultimately that's what you have to do let's move on to perfect exercise variation two in variation two we're going to add the D string to the Anda and starting with our G major Triad that gives us the G note at the fifth fret of the D string and like variation number one we're going to play the Triad and then go up to the next note in the scale which would B A at the seventh [Music] fret and then play back down to the root of the Triad next we would have a minor B [Music] minor C [Music] Major D [Music] major E minor [Applause] FSH [Music] diminished and then we'd be back to G up an octave from where we [Applause] started this variation gives us the Triad the root note of the Triad up an octave from where we started and then a descending scale run that starts on the note in the scale above the root of the Triad just something to be aware of as you're playing through the exercise you can see that this exercise is helping us ingrain multiple things we're putting together different Triad shapes we're learning the Triads within a key and whether they're major minor or diminished and we're putting together fingering patterns of the major scale starting on different notes this is great stuff and stick with me here because we're going to take it up another notch in variation number three you may have already guessed this but in variation three we're going to add another string the G string starting at our G major Triad this is going to give us the notes G and b d g and B again now from the B note on the G string in this variation we're going to play up two notes to the D at the seventh fret and then back down to our g at the third fret of the low [Music] E let's take it through the key and on up the neck here we'd have a [Music] minor B minor C [Music] Major D [Music] major E minor f sharp diminished and that brings us all the way back to G [Music] [Applause] major now we're really starting to stretch out both the arpegio and the scale patterns this is really getting good oh and something that just occurred to me we've been Asing in our examples but you should practice starting up high on the neck and descending like this also [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and it's really important that you practice until you can play it continually like I just did it doesn't have to be fast but I want you to get to the point where all these shapes and patterns they just start to flow together when things start to have that kind of continuity you know you're a approaching Mastery level okay on to variation number four in variation number four we're adding a fifth string so we'll be playing from the low E string to the B string starting with the G major arpegio that would give us the notes g b d g b d we're up on the B string now and from there we're going to jump up to the G at the eighth fret and we're going to descend through a two octave scale pattern back down to the G roote on the low E [Music] string and that's the formula for this variation play through the Triad arpeggio to the first note on the B string and then shift to the root note of the arpegio above that and play a descending two octave scale so here's G major [Music] again a [Applause] minor B [Music] minor C [Music] Major D [Applause] [Music] major E minor [Applause] F sharp [Music] diminished and that brings us back to G [Music] [Applause] major so a couple of things to think about here it's important to play all the variations of this exercise even variation one which was just on two strings why because each variation made us start our scale pattern on a different note on a different string I have lots of students that memorize two octave scale patterns but they usually practice by playing through the whole pattern they often have a really hard time if I ask them to start in the middle of it or start from a random note we just played all of our examples in the key of G but there are 12 keys and it's very important to play your practice exercises in each of those 12 if we're going to do this let's do it right make sure you practice starting at the bottom of the fretboard working upward and at the top of the fretboard working downward and we're ingraining several things with this one exercise the notes of the scale some Triads some scale patterns as you're playing through them take some time to think about the notes that are in the Triads think about the notes that are in the scale patterns if you don't know your notes of the fretboard really well well we're ingraining those too now for the sake of time we're going to stop there but there are several other variations we could do like using different inversions of the Triads or using seventh chords I could go on and on but this is already a lot to practice and I hope you're going to do just that this is the kind of exercise that will take your fretboard knowledge to an entirely different level and as I said before when you get to the point where you can play through all the variations smoothly continuously and without having to think about it too much then you're approaching the point of mastery so I hope you'll give the video a like I hope you subscribe to the channel I'm putting out Innovative lessons like this every week to help you understand the fretboard and to help you move your lead guitar skills forward as I always say Work Hard Play Hard have lots of fun and never stop learning thanks for watching

Channel: Charlie Long

Views: 116,690

Keywords: major scale guitar pattern, major scale guitar, major scale guitar lesson, music theory for guitar, master the major scale, beginner scale lesson, charlie long guitar, intermediate guitar lesson, learn the major scale guitar, best guitar lessons on Youtube, best guitar practice exercise, rock guitar lesson, guitar triad lesson, how to play scales and triads guitar, major scale

Id: IKsMLG6EkI4

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024