chromatic scale, G major, now what?

[samcatluth]

I've mastered the G major scale, position 1, fingering that can be moved up the neck to play G major, A major, C major, D major, E major and F major. It's just the same fingering moving up the neck, very cool. But, now what? What good is it? Is it used to make music or what? The book I'm using says it's a movable scale form with the root on the 6th string. By the way, I've now gone to the "dark side"...i.e. an electric guitar. I don't have a cut away and the really high frets like 12 and 14 are impossible without a cut away.

[rick-slo]

You mean diatonic scale I would think.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by samcatluth

I've mastered the G major scale, position 1, fingering that can be moved up the neck to play G major, A major, C major, D major, E major and F major. It's just the same fingering moving up the neck, very cool. But, now what? What good is it? Is it used to make music or what?

Scales in themselves are kind of like the alphabet. They're good to know, but you wouldn't just go around reciting them and expect anyone to think you're saying anything. To use them, you have to put them together into words, and words into sentences. Same with music. So now, you can start to pick out melodies that lie within the notes of that scale. Knowing the scale well - and not just up and down, but in patterns of all kinds sort of burns into your memory where the notes are, which should make it easier to find melodies.Play three blind mice, twinkle, twinkle, or any song you like, finding the notes with that scale (some songs may deviate for various reasons, but most will lie within the notes of that scale). If you're trying to play lead guitar, then you start learning to make up your own melodies, and perhaps play some flashy licks, all within that scale pattern.

[stanron]

There are scale patterns around all the open chord shapes and they can be moved up and down the neck as well.

You use this stuff playing single line melodies, what we used to call 'lead' guitar, and it's useful for melodic improvising and it makes transposing a doddle.

[rick-slo]

If you are comfortable with the first position G major scale then the next thing would be to learn to play some tunes in that key.

You will probably be using the open position scale fingering in many cases however.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by samcatluth

I've mastered the G major scale, position 1, fingering that can be moved up the neck to play G major, A major, C major, D major, E major and F major. It's just the same fingering moving up the neck, very cool. But, now what? What good is it? Is it used to make music or what?

Yes. Same as the alphabet is used to make words.

Of course, you can make music without knowing it, same as you can speak intelligibly without knowing how to spell.

The analogy is not perfect, because of course playing guitar doesn't come as naturally as learning to speak.
Scale practice, therefore, is mainly about finger exercise - building flexibility and strength, to the point where moving them around on the fretboard to find the notes you want feels as "natural" as possible.
Learning the note names, meanwhile, is useful for theory, for helping you put the "jigsaw" together, so you see the big picture rather than a baffling load of little pieces.

But essentially, you don't make music with scales, any more than you speak by stringing letters together. The letters and the spelling are how we can make sense of language after the event: we speak (and understand) before we learn how to spell.
Much the same with music. We can play it - and understand it perfectly - without needing to know the names of any of the notes we're playing. That's how non-musicians can understand music.

Originally Posted by samcatluth

The book I'm using says it's a movable scale form with the root on the 6th string.

Right. There are many others.
Any single scale (e.g. G major) has several different "positions" - the scale runs all over the neck (as all scales do!), and you can play it in any position by choosing the appropriate pattern (the root notes will be in different frets on different strings).
Or - as you've discovered - you can take any one pattern and move it up or down to get a different scale.

Originally Posted by samcatluth

By the way, I've now gone to the "dark side"...i.e. an electric guitar. I don't have a cut away and the really high frets like 12 and 14 are impossible without a cut away.

Not impossible. Just more difficult.

[samcatluth]

Very helpful, thanks for the replies.

[JonPR]

I forgot I was going to post the 12-fret G major scale in my last post. Here you go:

0  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12
E|---|-F#|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|
B|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|-F#|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|
G|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|-F#|-G-|
D|---|-E-|---|-F#|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|
A|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|-F#|-G-|---|-A-|
E|---|-F#|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|

As you can see, fret 12 is the same as 0, so 13=1 and so on.

There are two positions where you can get the whole scale within 4 frets, so each finger has its own fret. That's "2nd position" (frets 2-5) and "7th position" (frets 7-10). To play the scale, your fret hand stays where it is, and each finger just moves across the fretboard on its allocated fret as needed. In any other position, either the index needs to stretch back a fret for a note or two, or the pinky needs to stretch up a fret.

E.g., if you base your index finger on fret 5 (very appealing to have all those notes available), then your pinky has to stretch up to 9 to get the F# and B on strngs 5 and 4; or your index has to stretch back to get those notes on strings 4 and 3. (It's not a big problem, of course, just makes playing the scale a little slower until you're more practised.)

A useful exercise with this scale is to trace the chord arpeggios. That means each triad in the key, starting with the three major chords, G, C and D (which contain the whole scale between them).
E.g., a G major triad arpeggio is all the notes G-B-D, wherever you can find them. If you start mapping out those notes, I'm sure you will see some very familiar chord shapes appearing...