TAC Family Forums

Unfortunately the answer to your question involves getting into music theory and might confuse you even more. There’s a trick on the fretboard that might make things simpler again so I’ll give you a bit of theory and then give you the trick afterwards.

All Major Scales are made up of 7 notes:

The Formula for major scales is always:

W – W – H – W – W – W – H (where W is a whole step and H is a half step)

or: TONE – TONE – SEMITONE – TONE – TONE – TONE – SEMITONE

whole step is 2 frets and half step is 1 fret

The root of the scale is the first note, and that’s what we call the scale

So for the D major the root is D:

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

Here’s the little trick:
Now for how you can play it of the fretboard without knowing any of the above and just memorizing this pattern on 3 strings. But you have to start on the top 2 strings for this to work, otherwise the pattern would shift on the B string since it’s tuned to a 4th instead of a fifth.

The pattern is you play 2 notes then drop to lower string play 3 notes and drop again to play 2 more notes – that makes 7 notes just like all scales have. *

start with middle and play:

– m – p drop
i m – p drop
i – r p

if you memorize this pattern you can use it for all 12 major scales, all you need is to find the root and go from there: middle pinky – drop, index middle pinky drop, index ring pinky

For the D major you can start on the 5th fret of the A string. you start with middle and use pinky for the next note (skipping the fret your ring finger should be on. Hope this makes sense! You have to maintain your fingers in the same fret through the whole scale. Then the formula will work.

* if you play the final note to complete the octave then there are 8 notes, sorry for the confusion. In the D major we go up another half step and play D again (an octave higher than the first D)

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  petelanger.