How To Practice Your Scales in One

Position
Step one how are scales constructed?
Sometimes people overlook how scales are actually constructed and race ahead by learning set shapes.
With the guitar being such a shape driven instrument, you can get relatively far with a limited amount
of fretboard knowledge. However the most important step that you can take in developing your
musicianship is to dedicate as much time as you can to increasing your musical fluency.

So lets start with the theory behind a major scale.

In western music we divide the octave into 12 equal steps. We can see these as the keys on a piano or
the way the guitar fretboard repeats after the 12th fret.

However western music isn’t normally based on this 12 note scale (named the chromatic scale). We
tend to use what is called the Major scale.

The major scale is a way of breaking the octave into 7 different notes. The spacing this time however is
not an even division.

Let’s build the scale

C D E F G A B C
w w h w w w h

We can see that we have a pattern of whole-step, whole-step, half-step, whole-step, whole-step, whole-
step, half-step.

This pattern can be applied to any note to construct the relative major scale.

F G A Bb C D E

G A B C D E F#

We can see that we have to use accidentals on some notes in order for the pattern to be completed.
Wouldn’t it be handy if there was a way for us to organize
these scales?

The cycle of fifths gives us a way of visualizing each key. As we

move clockwise around the circle we are adding a sharp. As we
move anti-clockwise we are adding a flat.

Note that the sharp is always added the 7th note of the new scale.
Likewise the flat is always added to the 4th note of the new scale.

How can we apply this to the guitar?

Now typically when we are learning the guitar we learn set shapes for scales. Now this is for good
reason, it allows you to build muscle memory and also to develop a workable knowledge of how the
major scale should sound.

However there reaches a point when we need to break away from this and move away from the concept
of ‘running scale shapes’. Scales do not have to start and stop on the same note, nor does the starting
note affect what the scale is. It takes a different harmonic context to change this.

Now lets start a traditional scale shape as our starting point.

This is a one octave shape for the C major scale. We’re going to use the cycle of 5th/4ths to practice
every major scale based in this one position.

The first thing we’ll do is play around the cycle of 5ths, adding a sharp each time.
We can also move anti-clockwise around the cycle, giving us the cycle of 4ths. Adding a flat each time.
These are all one octave shapes, but we can apply the same principal to any scale shape. Thinking in
this way begins to force a different perception of scales on the guitar and will help you to further your
knowledge of the fretboard.