Hello. I hope you had a great summer, because I know I did. I was going to have a bunch of great excuses for not making a new lesson for 2 or 3 months, but they probably won't work now. I guess using being gone at the Cornerstone music festival for a week is kind of an old story that doesn't really work 3 months later. Anyway, I made a new lesson, so you should all rejoice in the Lord and stuff. A little side note- I was listening to some of the guitar mp3's I made the other day and allot of them sounded terrible. I'm thinking about redoing them sometime, so everybody needs to bug me to do it... and put up some bass sound clips too. Anyway, here's the newest lesson ever on "The Major Scale."

"What's a scale?" you ask as you're about to toss your hard earned bass into a garbage receptacle out of dismay. A scale is a set of notes that go together and sound good. The major scale is happier sounding than the minor scale (next lesson, my young padawan...) it's used for uplifting melodies and harmonies and stuff. I think I mentioned in a past lesson (I'm too lazy to actually check) that there are 12 keys which are higher and lower than each other.  Let's look at the G major scale.

The G major scale (in it's most recognizable form has 7 notes; G, A, B, C, D, E and F#.  On tab, that would come out to:
 
G -0-2-4-5-7-9-11-12-14-16-17-19-21-23-24
D -0-2-4-5-7-9-10-12-14-16-17-19-21-22-24
A -0-2-3-5-7-9-10-12-14-15-17-19-21-22-24
E -0-2-3-5-7-8-10-12-14-15-17-19-20-22-24

I think I got all of that right... oh well, if I got a note wrong, I'm sure everybody will tell me.  What are friends for?  Anyways, the notes don't have to be played in any specific order or tempo, that's the beauty of music, it can be however you want it to... it's up to the artist.

If you want that scale in a different key just move the whole thing up or down your frets.  As you may recall, the 12 keys (in order) are E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C, C#, D,  D# and back to E.  So basically, if you want the major scale in the key of C, you'd move the G scale up 5 frets.  If you  wanted it in F, you'd move it down 2 frets. 

I hope that you understood at least half of what I just said.  If you didn't, read it again slowly.  If that doesn't work, try buying a book on scales.  If all else fells, sell your bass guitar at a garage sale for $15.  See you there.  Chow.