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This is less of a lesson – more of a stream of consicousness – it took me a while to wrap my head around this lesson – so you, the reader are made to suffer too… sorry about that.

The basis of most western music is the C major scale (also called the Ionian scale)

C D E F G A B C
1  2  3  4  5 6  7 8

Major scales follow the pattern of
Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step | Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step

Chord formula for Major Chords 1, 3, 5 – so if we take the C scale above and extract the 1, 3 and 5 notes we end up with C E G – the notes that make up a standard C Major chord

A major 7 adds in the 7th note – so for the above example the B is also added bringing the chord to C E G B

Wow I am not sure where to start on this one – we covered a bunch of stuff tonight, I’ve really got my work cut out for me. I guess I will start with pentatonic scales since that is the bulk of what we covered. There are really only 5 shapes that cover all pentatonic scales – learning them will be the tough part.

Tonight we covered starting with an E root note for the scales – acknowledging that simply shifting the root note up or down the neck totally changes what scale you’re playing – and based on where you start the shape changes weather it is a Major or Minor Pentatonic…fun stuff even though a bit heady.

so 5 shapes.

Shape One: (for the E pentatonic the root notes on this are simply the open strings)

Shape 2:

Shape 3:

Shape 4:

Shape 5:

The sixth shape to complete the octave is really just the first shape played again.

A couple of noteworthy things here.

1. The back notes of one pentatonic are the front notes of the previous – they all fit together much like a puzzle (a really really complicated puzzle)
2. Here’s where it gets really heady – the root note separates the major from the minor so on shape one for example – playing the open E string first makes the scale an E Minor Pentatonic – Playing the G note on the E string (3rd fret) first makes it an E major pentatonic

We also dealt with writing the scales out tonight – all 12 of them – but I need to wrap my head around that one a bit more before I dive into trying to”explain” it.  So stay tuned for the “Guitar Lesson 3a” post.

Ran across this link after posting – worth checking out.

My first guitar lesson was last night.  I am getting over my issues with taking a “class”, having “homework”, and feeling like a dork since I have no earthly idea why I want to play the guitar in the first place.  – Enough about all of that, done venting.

So obviously the best place to start any journey is at the beginning – and I am not very good so baby steps suit me just fine.  Last night we went over the C Major Scale

|------------------------------0-1-3--|
|------------------------0-1-3--------|
|--------------------0-2--------------|
|--------------0-2-3------------------|
|--------0-2-3------------------------|
|--0-1-3------------------------------|

My challenge this week is to:

1. learn the scale (doing alright on this)
2. learn to play it on the whole, half & quarter notes
3. learn to play it to a metronome – optional (who are we kidding – - I’ll make myself do this)