Scales: The First Position – Part 2

As promised in the last lesson of this series, here are some exercises using the root form.

Practice them slowly using alternate picking throughout.


(more…)

Scales: The First Position

There are five basic positions which I always start with. All of them connect with each other and allow you to play the major scale over the whole fretboard. Eventually, you’ll stop seeing the positions and just see the whole fretboard as a unit.

It’s important to note that these are all different ways of playing the same scale. A scale is simply a group of notes placed in order from lowest to highest. The same scale can be played millions of ways on the guitar.

Let’s start with the first position, which I call the Root Form. I call it that because it starts on the root of the scale (in this case, C Major). First I’ll show it to you as a diagram, so you can see the overall shape.

root_pos

Here it is in standard notation and TAB:

(more…)