Intervals (major VS pentatonic)

How's it going guys, welcome to another lesson from my acoustic lead guitar course, which is totally for free here on YouTube. And we've got bonus materials and things like that, e-books, packing tracks, all on the website, the links in the description to see the rest of this course. In this video, we're looking at how to play scales, and a few scales actually, on just one string. Now this is so important and is so overlooked by many guitarists. Um, when we're learning scales, we typically learn scales in positions, so position one of the major scale, for example, which was something we covered earlier in this course. That is actually covered in lesson one of this free course, uh, on YouTube, the playlist is uh in in the links in the top corner to that, but, uh, what we're looking at is how to do exactly that just on one string, and now this is going to be very easy to physically do for the most part, cos we're just gonna start from the open string. But what this does is allows us to focus more on the intervals, and uh the intervals are something that becomes so important at the higher levels of learning guitar in general, never mind just lead guitar. Um, all an interval is, is the distance between any two notes. So the distance between the open string and the second fret. For example, is a major 2nd interval, or it can just be known as a 2nd interval. Uh, we're not going to get too much into the theory, but if you need a bit of background on that, it is in the e-book that accompanies this course. We're gonna get straight on and actually look at the minor pentatonic scale on one string, just on the thickest string to begin with, cos this is super easy. All we're going to play is the open thickest string. And then every fret that has a dot on it. If you have a guitar that's similar to mine, and we have a dot at 3rd fret, 5th, 79, and the double dot is at 12th fret, which is why I'm using my Yamaha, not my 5th, uh, cos there's no dots on the front of that one. Um, the only one that is different is the 9th fret, and that fret, I never quite know why this one has a dot on it, cause logically, for this to work for every one of them, should actually be a 10th. So, um, if we go through this together, we need to play the thickest open string. Then play 3rd fret, which again, should have a dot on it, so that's fairly straightforward. 5th fret also. 7th fret, which also has a dot. And then rather than the dotted 9th fret, we should play 10. And then the double dot. So that means we've played through the five notes of the minor pentatonic scale. 12345, and then the octave, which is the same note as the first note we started with, so that's essentially back to the 1 again. Scale tones wise, we're only going to, going to go from the first one to the octave and every time we get to an octave, we're going to treat it as one, at the very least for the purposes of this course, though that's uh typically what we do in general. So that is. Pretty easy and straightforward for most of you. What we're gonna go straight onto now is how to do this with the major scale, which is what we've been looking at through the entirety of this course. So for example, if we were wanting to play a solo over a song which was in the key of E major. Something that sounded perhaps like that. Um, we could play it just on one string using the the following notes. We would use the open, fret. Secondret. 4 5 7 9 11. I'm finishing on 12th. Again, that is the octave. This is the major scale, let me just play that for you one more time. As soon as I play it one after the other like that, you can hear that major scale sound, which is so different to the minor pentatonic. That minor pentatonic kind of sound, and again I'll focus on why we're learning this on one string in a second. But one benefit is that we can actually now play it on any string, so uh depending on the key you were in, if you were in A, you could start on the open A string. And now you know those frets that I've just shouted out, you can play it on, on any of those strings, depending on what key you're in. But if we were in the key of E. We could also do this of course on the thinnest string cos that's tuned to the same note. Uh, now playing that, it's not too easy to do quickly. You know, it's, it's actually easier to play the major scale in kind of position one. Rather than Jumping up on, on one string, it's, it's that and that is primarily why we learn uh scales in one position, just in one part of the neck, um because it's easier to go up and down the notes that we know, but what this allows us to do is see these intervals and compare one scale to another. So what we're going to do now is compare those two scales and then do them in the patterns that we learned earlier, which is what I did at the start of this video, I did it in a 3 note pattern. Um, if we just, we'll play this on the thinnest Estring. So this would be, for example, if you have a song or backing track you want to improvise over in the key of E. One of those is available on the website, the link to that is in the description. We would play the E major scale starting with the open E string, then playing the 2nd fret, the 4th fret. The 5th threat 7th threat. 9th fret. 11th fret and 12th fret. Now the open string. And then 4 and 5. Are usually going to be the same in any scale that you learn, and it's the case in in this case here with the minor pentatonic and the major scale, and even the major pentatonic, which is also covered in the next video of this course. The three notes that are always the same are the open. The 4th note, which is that 5th fret. And the fifth note of the scale, 12345, which happens to be at 7th fret. And whether I play the major scale. There was the 4th note and the 5th note, or. We always played fret 5 and fret 7. They are also the two scale tones that would make the. The 4 chord and the 5 chord. Which are the only major chords out of our diatonic chords in the key, in whatever key you happen to be in, it's always the one. and the 5. And to learn a bit more of that, you can check out my little music theory course. I will be doing more on that, providing a free ebook, doing some more work on that to help you guys out with it. Um, I know it's a big topic at this kind of intermediate level that we're looking at here. But the biggest thing that I want to communicate in this lesson is just to make sure that when you learn a scale, learn the intervals of it as well. And we'll have more on this interval idea coming as I say in the in the future. In this case, we've looked so much at the major scale. I just wanna make sure you can play it on one string so you know what it actually is. It's the distance um of these notes and those, the distance between those notes in terms of the major scale. Is a whole turn between the open and second fret. Between the 2nd fret and 4th fret, it's another whole tone, or a whole step. Between the next note, it's a semitone, so only one fret. It's a whole tone, whole tone, whole tone, semitone. So a whole tone. Is 2 frets and a semitone is just one fret, it's the next fret to it. And therefore we have a pattern. Now I really like patterns cause they make it really easy to remember things. And what we have a pattern of is a pattern of 2 and 3. That pattern of 2 and 3 is exactly the same as you would find on a piano. So when you're playing the C major scale and you start from middle C, when you play all the white keys going up, you pass 2. Black notes and then 3 black notes. That is a pattern that is not only exclusive to guitar, that is a pattern in music. And I really want to communicate this idea that this pattern of 2 and 3, which is so visual on a piano, can be as visual on a guitar. We just, we just need a cert, we need to see it from a certain angle, and it is not visual at all when we learn pattern one, for example, of this major scale. Let me show you that pattern again. We have, remember the pattern is 2 and then 32 notes, 2 whole steps, then a semitone, 3 whole steps, then a semitone. So. There's our first note, whole step. Whole step, which is 2 frets. Open to 2nd, 2nd to 4th, so. 1 whole step, 2 whole step, semitone. Whole step, whole step, whole step, semitone. That is the biggest thing that I want you to take away from this lesson, it is the essential music theory that you need to know about the major scale to understand everything from here. So much of this course I've tried to make as practical as possible to help you to physically play melodies and improvise kind of freely without thinking over major scale backing tracks and major scale songs. But the biggest thing that you need to take going forward is knowing why those fit together, and then when you come across a backing track that none of the stuff that you currently know is working, you can look at the chords underneath it and, and what's happening in the song, you know, learn the song and see why it doesn't match. Primarily, that was, that is always going to be that uh the song that you learnt is more based on the minor pentatonic scale, so you're playing. This kind of idea in your melodies, and then the backing track or the riff is uh using chords. That are based more on this minor pentatonic scale, and the frets aren't matching, the notes that you're playing, aren't matching the backing track. That's what's happening. And if you want to learn more of the uh minor pentatonic style, so more of the. More of that kind of jive, that is rock and a blues based kind of uh licks. That is all in my rock and blues lead guitar course. This is a premium course and it's only available from Andyguitar.co.uk. It's coming on download and stream, and on a DVD. There's no book associated with it, we've just got a PDF document that's kind of a guide through the through the videos, similar to to this one. if you're interested in that, that would work great in conjunction. With this course to really see the two sides of things, the more acousticy major scale stuff, and then the rocky minor pentatonic stuff. But the minor pentatonic stuff is always more lick-based, so we'll be uh focusing on improvising a lead guitar, but more with licks and techniques in that course. Um, but if you haven't already, you need, you absolutely need to get these backing tracks and start practising over them, um, in the correct keys, so if it's in the key of G, you start with the G major scale. Now you could even do that. Just on one string. To create your melodies or do them in a pattern like we looked at previously, so I'll just cover quickly how to do that. Uh, the pattern that I played at the start was the pattern that we looked at in video three of this course. Going forward, 123. Back one. And then 123. Back 123, back 123, back 123, back 123. And in total, And of course you can use the 4 note pattern and um really start to experiment at this level if you're wanting to come up with your own lead lines, you should be able to apply a pattern that you learn say in one position like the one we looked at. That 3 note pattern that we looked at in lesson 3, and video 3 of this course, you should be able to apply that to a scale that you learn in another position or on one string like we've just done. Um, great, I'm really looking forward to your feedback on this course as well. Let me know what you think in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube or get in touch via the website to let me know how you've done if you got this far into it. I look forward to hearing from you all. Thank you very much for watching and enjoy playing some lead guitar.