Categories
Modes Explained Scales

Modes Explained 1: An Introduction

Over the next few months we’ll be exploring the theory and usage of the most common scales guitarists use. Specifically we’ll be exploring the seven modes, which include the simple major and minor scales, and we’ll also be looking at the major and minor pentatonic scales as well as the blues scale. After we’ve covered the ‘basics’ we’ll look at the harmonic minor and the melodic minor scales, which are the most common variations on the natural minor scale; and finally look at a few modes of those minor scales. Hopefully, this series will end up as the most thorough and detailed explanation of scales for guitarists anywhere on the web! :fingers crossed:

Today though, we’ll start simple, and find out just what a scale is 🙂 .

Categories
Chord, Scale and Arpeggio Charts Scales

Scale Charts: Major, Minor(s), and Pentatonics

Recently I’ve been preparing a number of chord charts and scale charts for my CAGED Articles as well as for the Essential Open Chords post. While I was backing-up/re-organising my working files from those posts I realised, that I’d created a whole bunch of fingering charts. So I added a the ones that were missing and collated them all into a few pdfs and hey presto!

Categories
Lead Guitar Scales The CAGED System

The CAGED System 2: The Major Scale and the Minor Pentatonic Scale

In CAGED Part 1, we saw how the CAGED system can be used to help beginner-intermediate players to visualise the chords shapes across the fretboard. Today we’ll apply the same idea to scale shapes.

Categories
Chord, Scale and Arpeggio Charts Scales

Scale Charts: Diatonic Modes

Today is a pretty simple post, just a pdf for each of the seven diatonic modes. Each pdf includes both a large fretboard map for the whole neck, the five CAGED positions and the seven 3NPS (three notes per string) fingerings. Theres also a single pdf with all seven pages as one document.

Categories
Chord, Scale and Arpeggio Charts Chords Scales Theory

Blank Music Paper

I’ve been working on a few up-coming posts about rhythm reading – and I’ve been using the Lilypond music engraver to prepare the notation. In doing so I’ve also discovered how to create blank manuscript and blank TAB paper. I also grabbed out the old templates I’ve been using to create my chord charts.

Categories
Chords Scales Theory

Reading Chord/Scale Diagrams

Diagrams are an easy way to visualise where to put your fingers when learning chords or scales.