A Quick Start Guide To

Guitar Scale Patterns:

The Key To Your Fretboard!



























By Jonathan Boettcher
PlayGuitar.com


This guide may not be copied in any form.
It is for personal use only.

Disclaimer And Copyright Information

Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Boettcher
PlayGuitar.com

You do NOT have permission to re-sell or re-package this guide in any way, shape or
form without my written consent.

You DO have permission to freely share this guide via print or electronically with
friends, family, or other musicians whom you believe may benefit from it, as long as
it remains unaltered.

Disclaimer

Individual results from the Guitar Scale Patterns course vary depending on the
player’s skill level and commitment to learning the material. Any testimonials or
success stories reflect the actual results realized by those individual players, and
will not necessarily reflect your own experience with the course.

Non-legal disclaimer: This is just common sense folks! If you apply yourself and
make an effort to learn the material, then you’ll do well. If you don’t, well… Neither
me nor anyone else is going to be able to help you there.

I’ve got your back

However, all my guitar lessons come with a complete “No Weasel Clauses” money
back guarantee. If for any reason you’re not fully satisfied with the course, I’ll give
you a full refund (within 60 days) so there is no risk on your part.

This Quick Start Guide is intended as a primer to get you quickly working with the
fretboard in ways you haven’t done before. It is not the complete Guitar Scale
Patterns course.

For more information on the Guitar Scale Patterns course, please visit my website:

http://playguitar.com/gsp

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Scales: The Key To Your Fretboard

Around the time when I was first learning to play guitar, I had a friend who was also
learning. At the time, he could solo better than I could. His solos were raw and
aggressive; he’d dive right in there and play like he really meant it.

But there was one problem… he often had bad sounding notes in his solos (notes
that didn’t belong in the key).

At the time, I was just starting to learn my first guitar scales. I wasn’t very good with
them, so I played a bit timidly and awkwardly, and fairly slow.

But - my solos didn’t have those same bad sounding, out-of-key notes in them…

I can vividly remember having a conversation with him about it one day. I asked him
why he didn’t use scales, and would he like me to teach him one? His answer was
that scales would just slow him down. I suppose he took my playing at the time as
proof.

His approach was just to fiddle around the fretboard (quickly, mind you) until he
found a spot he liked, and then start trying different notes. He’d figured out a few
patterns that worked some of the time, in some positions, and so he’d try those. His
ear was fairly good too, and that helped him out quite a bit. All the same, he didn’t
know the reasons why one thing he played fit with another, or even how they were
related to the key we played in.

If you told him a song was in A minor, there was about a 80% chance his first few
notes would sound okay. Sound like decent odds? That also means there’s a good
20% chance the first few notes would sound horrible!

Fast forward a few months… once again we’re jamming together.

This time, the scales (pun intended) are turned – now my solos are the ones with the
speed, and his appeared slower and more awkward by comparison. Additionally, his
solos still had those bad sounding notes in them, and mine still had all good
sounding notes.

He asked me how I had managed to improve so much in just a few months, but when
I told him I had done so by practicing scales, he kind of laughed and brushed it off.
“Whatever dude, if that works for ya.”

I never did have a chance to jam with him again after that, and to this day I don’t
know if he ever did finally learn some scales, or not.

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The reason I told you that story is to demonstrate that the information I’m going to
share with you today really does have the power to propell you along the path of
fretboard freedom faster than the “average” player who chooses not to learn scales.

This first section may be review for you, or it may be fresh. Either way, it unlocks the
mystery of how to find anything you want on your fretboard.

Frets & The Fretboard

On the guitar neck, we have six strings (7 string guitars work the same way!), and a
number of steel frets set in a specific spacing pattern. Play any string open (without
touching it), and then play the same string at the first fret, and you’ve gone up one
semitone in pitch. If you play the same string at the third fret, you’ve now gone up
by three semitones.

Every time you go up one fret, you’re going up one semitone. If you go down a fret,
you go down a semitone. The fretboard is beautifully simple and logical that way.

Let’s deal with this term I just dropped on you: semitone. A semitone is the smallest
distance we have between two notes (at least in western music). Two semitones
equals a whole tone, or just simply, a tone. Semi means half, so that should be easy
to remember.

Musical notes have letter names… let’s start with A.

The fifth string on your guitar (counting up from thinnest to thickest) is an open A.
Play at the first fret, and you’ve gone up a semitone… now you’re at A♯ (A sharp). Go
up again, and you’re at B.

Here’s the full sequence:

A – A♯/B♭ – B – C – C♯/D♭ – D – D♯/E♭ – E – F – F♯/G♭ – G – G♯/A♭ - A

I want to point out a few very important things to recognize here. First, notice that
there are seven natural notes that do not have flat or sharp symbols. Those are the
letters A through G.

In between most of those, you find sharps and flats… with the exception of between
the B and C, and between the E and F.

I’m not going to get into the reasons for that today, but it is really important to know
that from B to C is a natural semitone. All the rest of the letters have a semitone in
between them.

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So for instance, in between D and E, we find D♯, which can also be written as E♭.

♯ = sharp = raising a note by one semitone
♭ = flat = lowering a note by one semitone
♮ = natural = the note is neither flat nor sharp

If you raise a B by one semitone, you get a C, because that distance is a natural
semitone.

Depending on the scale you’re working with, a note might be either sharp or flat. For
instance, in the key of G major we have an F♯ but in the key of G♭ major, the exact
same note or pitch is called a G♭.

There are seven natural notes and five accidental notes in our complete musical
scale (also called the chromatic scale), for a total of 12 notes altogether. That’s why
the 12th fret on the guitar is the repeat, or octave. Each string ascends through 12
notes, fret by fret, and ends up an octave higher on the 12th fret. Try it!

è The reason we’ve gone through all this terminology is that now you
have the key to finding any note name on your fretboard.

Let’s do a quick example. If you want to find an A on your freboard, where would
you look?

A good starting point might be the open A on the fifth string. Well, you could also go
up 12 frets from there, and you’ve got another A. But what about other strings?

Take the open E (6th string). What do we need to move from E to A? Look back at the
last page, and you will see we need 5 semitones to get from E to A. Count ‘em!

E, F, F♯, G, G♯, A. That means that the 6th string, 5th fret, is also an A.

Now, go up 12 frets from there… you’re at the 17th fret, and you have another A!

You can apply this to each string, and find that there are A’s on each string.

Now, the really cool part is that because the fretboard works the way it does, there
are plenty of patterns that repeat themselves. By learning them, we can make our
playing FAR more efficient than my friend in the story I started with.

I have been playing for a long time and could always get by. Now you have given me a lot more tools
and knowledge to bring me to a higher level that seemed to have not been obtainable before. I am
playing more and seem to be getting better. As well as not so frustrated.

~ Bob Lutzkow

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The Power of Patterns

As humans, we’re designed to recognize patterns. While you read this guide, your
brain is recognizing words as patterns and associating them with meaning, so fast
that you don’t even consciously think about it. In fact, pattern recognition is so
powerful, you may have seen those things passed around on the internet where they
remove all the vowels from a paragraph… and most people can still read it full
speed, simply because of pattern recognition!

On the guitar, we can quickly and readily engage with patterns too. A pattern gives
us a tool to work with – not something to be used in precisely the same way every
time, but rather a strong starting point that can produce reliable results. Just like
learning a language doesn’t mean you speak the same sentences every time, but
instead, you’ve got words you can arrange into any order to communicate
effectively.

Another major benefit of patterns is speed. As you learn and practice a scale pattern,
you’re training your fingers where the good sounding notes are… and at the same
time, how to skip the bad sounding ones.

When it comes time to solo, muscle memory takes over and does much of the heavy
lifting – fingers on both hands working together to accurately choose the notes you
want from the scale.

The more you practice your scales, the faster and more accurately you will be able to
play – guaranteed.

Finding Scales On The Fretboard

So with that said, let’s dive straight into our first scale. There’s a lot more foundation
that could be laid, including how to find all the notes in each key, and I’ve covered all
that thoroughly in my Guitar Scale Patterns course. For right now though, my goal is
to get you using all of your fretboard as quick as possible, so that’s what we’ll focus
on.

We’re going to look at the key of G major, which has the following notes in it:

G – A – B – C – D – E – F♯ - G

All the chords you use in the key of G are built using combinations of these seven
notes… and that means that if you use these same notes in your guitar solos, over
top of chords that are also using them, then it will sound good. Or at least, it won’t
clash! Sounding good may take some more practice J.

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So these seven notes are the key to soloing in the key of G major. All we have to do
now is find where those notes are on the fretboard, and then find some convenient
ways we can play them.

At the bottom of this page, you’ll see three diagrams. These three are what I
consider the most important scale patterns to learn first. Are there more? Of course.
But with these three, as you’ll see, you can play anywhere on the fretboard.

The first pattern, on the left, is called the Root 6 “E” Diatonic Minor scale pattern.

Let’s deal with a few of those terms. “Root 6” refers to the fact that the root note -
the anchor note – for this scale pattern, is found on the 6th string.

Diatonic means it is a seven note or seven tone scale (dia = seven, tonic = tone)

Minor means the scale is a minor scale. There are two main flavors in music, major
and minor. Major is brighter, happier sounding. Minor is sadder, more melancholy.
They are two sides of the same coin, and every key has both major and minor scales,
as well as major and minor chords.

At this point, there’s a lot more theory that would be helpful to really understand
how all this fits together, but for now, I’m going to give you the quick explanation. If
you’re interested to know more, I encourage you to checkout the Guitar Scale
Patterns course.

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The scale we’re talking about is an E diatonic minor scale, because its root note is an
E (the red notes indicate root notes). The simple explanation for why E diatonic
minor sounds good in the key of G major is that every single note in the scale comes
straight from the G major scale.

Check it out – you can compare this against what’s in the diagrams too:

G Major: G – A – B – C – D – E – F♯ - G

E Minor: E – F♯ - G – A – B – C – D – E

This is so important to grasp! People ask me all the time about the seven modes, but
here’s the simple truth: all seven are simply different starting points for the same
scale. When you use all seven, there’s tons of overlap on each one. When you reduce
it down to three patterns, you get very little overlap, and yet still cover the whole
fretboard. Which equally effective starting point would you rather choose? Learning
seven patterns? Or three?

That’s all we’re doing with the three patterns we’re looking at here, starting the
same series of notes from a different place on the fretboard.

When you boil it down right to the basics, it’s pretty simple, isn’t it?

Root 6 Diatonic Minor

Okay, here’s that diagram again – this
time, notice the finger positions.
General best-practice is to assign one
finger per fret as you play these scales,
so you’re not twisting up your fingers
like spaghetti noodles. This way
everything stays clear and quick. Your
first finger is your index finger, and
your fourth finger is your pinky. I’m
sure you can figure out the rest!

To play through the scale, start at the E
on the top left, then go through each
string playing the rest of the notes in
the pattern. When you get to the end of
those notes (in this case, G) move up to
the next string – in this case, the A on

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the 5th string. When you get to the G at the

very top (1st string, 3rd fret), go back down
in the same manner.

Notice that some of the notes are solid
colors, and some are hollow. When you play
every single note you are playing the
diatonic version of the scale, and when you
play just the solid notes, you are playing the
pentatonic version of the scale.

Just like we learned that diatonic is a seven
note scale, pentatonic is a five note scale.
I’m not going to go much deeper into that
topic today, but if you’ve heard the term
pentatonic before, it’s helpful to at least see
the relationship.

Before we move on from this pattern, I
want to point out that the way you see it
here is an open format. In other words, it is
using open notes (where your finger
doesn’t touch the string). The exact same
pattern can be moved to different places on
your fretboard, but obviously then it will no
longer use open notes, and we would call it
a closed pattern. When you play it this way,
the fingering changes just a little, and your
whole hand position shifts down a fret
relative to the pattern.

In fact, this exact same scale can be played
at the 12th fret – remember how we saw
that everything repeats every 12 frets?

On the right, we see what that same scale
looks like, played at the 12th fret. The main
gotcha on this is a little pinky stretch to
catch that last note on the 4th string. That’s
why finger #4 is listed twice. You could
optionally play that F♯ on the 3rd string, 11th
fret if you prefer.

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Root 6 Diatonic Major

Okay, now we move on to the next pattern, this one is called the Root 6 “G”
Diatonic Major. You can think of this as the “home” scale for the key of G major,
because everything else is based off it. But just because that’s the case doesn’t mean
you have to use it in a solo – you can use any of these patterns and exclude the
others, if you choose. The choice is yours!

E A D G B E Notice that the root note here is a G, but
the first note on the 6th string is an F♯.
Some scale patterns are like this, and
you should start playing from the root
note instead of the first note on the
string. You can try playing it both ways,
but your ear will quickly tell you it
sounds far better starting on the G. The
reason is that G is the tonic, and so the
spacing of all the other notes
complements that G… not the F♯.

Also notice that there is some overlap
between this and the first pattern we
learned. Because these scales both use
the same notes, in the same spacing and
order, only from different starting
points, it makes total sense that they
would mesh together on the fretboard
like the gears of two wheels.

Once again, use the one-finger-per-fret rule here and you’ll be just fine, starting of
course with your second finger.

So far we’ve covered about half the fretboard. Keep in mind of course that every 12
frets, all the patterns repeat themselves, so in that sense, the “complete” fretboard is
a mere 12 frets.

Just wanted to thank you for a few “new” ideas I picked up from your scale course and
one earthshaking discovery that linked together stuff I’ve been doing for over 40 years
playing around on the guitar.

~Mark Hintz, Florida

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Root 5 Diatonic Minor

The last pattern we’re going to look at
here will take us the rest of the way up
the fretboard.

It’s called the Root 5 “E” Diatonic
Minor Scale. The fact that the root
note for this scale is on the 5th string
makes it a bit different from the other
patterns we’ve looked at. There are a
number of good reasons for that, but
I’m not going to get into it today.

For now, simply study the pattern
starting from the E root note and going
up to the next E root note, and
compare it to the first octave of the
first pattern we learned. You will find
they are identical, just in different
positions. That’s why both of these are
minor.

This pattern starts on the 7th fret, and
ends on the 10th fret.

At the 12th fret, the patterns all start
over again, so now we’ve effectively
covered the entire fretboard using
three patterns.

I’ve come farther in two months now that I understand the patterns than I did in many years of
trying, getting frustrated, and quitting.

You broke down the mysterious fretboard and made learning easy.

At fifty five, a great regret was never learning to play the guitar. Because of you and your
program I am on the way to erasing that regret from my life. This may sound overstated, but I
assure you, it is not.

~ Thomas Hill, Salt Lake City, Utah

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Cheatsheet: Scale Patterns For The Key of G

Tip: Print this cheatsheet and keep it handy for quick reference in your guitar case.

You can use any of these patterns to solo over any song in the key of G major, or E
minor. You can change patterns if you wish, or stay put in just one – the choice is
yours!

When you’re ready to truly understand your fretboard, and take your playing to the
next level, checkout the Guitar Scale Patterns course here:

http://playguitar.com/gsp

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Learn By Patterns – Not Memorization

Over the years I’ve come across many guitar players trying to learn the notes on
their fretboard by sheer memorization. Unfortunately for them, that’s a much
slower, more inefficient way to learn the fretboard than taking a patterns approach.

When you truly grasp the power of how patterns work on your fretboard, everything
changes.

The patterns I’ve shown you today can be applied to every single key, you just need
to move the root notes around.

When I was in high school, I took trumpet in band, and I was required to play the
major scale in every key without mistakes. That took practicing every single scale
separately, on it’s own, because they were all different.

Then one day I switched to guitar, learned a single scale pattern, and when the same
test came around that year, I laughed my buns off because I played that one single
pattern 12 different times at different places on the fretboard, and aced the test in
about a minute flat.

It was so easy by comparison!

That my friend, is the true beauty of learning patterns on the guitar. If you learn just
one scale pattern, it’s like you’ve learned 12, because that pattern can be used for
every key. Brilliant!

If you’re ready to fully unlock your fretboard, I highly recommend checking out my
Guitar Scale Patterns course.

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About The Author

Jonathan Boettcher has helped thousands of guitar
players understand and play their instruments better.

You can signup for free weekly video guitar tips from
Jonathan at http://www.playguitar.com, as well as check
out his other lessons at the links below.
Unlocking I IV V
Understand how and why chords work together! Learn
the simple rules that govern which chords belong in each
key, and ways that you can quickly them all. We’ll also take a look at how you can
build your own chords, so you’ll never have to rely on chord charts again!
Grab the free Foundation Course here

Guitar Scale Patterns

This guitar lesson builds on the concepts taught in Unlocking I IV V, and takes them
much further into a deeper understanding of scales and how they relate to the
fretboard. You will learn how solos come directly from the scales, and how you can
play a scale or solo in any position you want on the fretboard. Specific scale patterns
are demonstrated in close-up detail and taught in a way that will truly make your
fretboard come alive in your hands.
Learn more about Guitar Scale Patterns here

Dynamic Rhythm Guitar
If you want to take your rhythm playing seriously, and learn to make playing rhythm
so much fun you don’t even need a solo, then this is the course for you. It’s in depth,
and covers everything you need to truly establish your rhythm skills, from picking
and strumming to theory and slipping riffs in between your rhythms, it’s all here.
Learn more about Dynamic Rhythm Guitar here

Secrets of Tasty Riffs & Solos

Discover the secrets of creating guitar riffs and solos that are laser-targeted to
harmonize perfectly with the chord progression. Learn a completely new approach
to working with the fretboard that doesn’t rely upon scale patterns! This course is a
nice blend of theory with a heavy dose of practical application where you’ll learn not
only numerous written solos developed specifically for four custom jam tracks, but
you’ll also learn improvising techniques as well.
Learn a sweet fretboard-climbing run here

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30 Blues Jam Tracks & 30 Rock Jam Tracks

These two collections of 30 backing tracks each will seriously spice up your practice
time! Playing over jam tracks is an excellent way to develop your ear as you learn to
listen to the music and fit your own playing into it. Timing, fluidity and speed all
improve as a result. This is a great way to work over new riffs you’re learning, or
simply to practice your scales! Bonus video guitar lesson included with each pack.
Grab a FREE blues jam track here
Grab a FREE rock jam track here

Bar Chords Made Simple

Bar chords got you down? The approach you’ll find in Bar Chords Made Simple has
helped many guitar players break through the bar chord barrier and finally begin
using the rest of their fretboard.
Learn more about Bar Chords Made Simple here

Decoding The Bass Guitar

Bass players – prepare to play like never before! Decoding the Bass Guitar takes the
concepts that are covered in Unlocking I IV V and Guitar Scale Patterns, and applies
them specifically to the bass guitar. You will learn how you can truly cover the entire
fretboard using only two scale patterns, and furthermore you will learn how you can
use the intervals in the scale to create riffs and fills like never before!
Learn about Decoding The Bass Guitar here

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