How to Connect Scale Patterns

Scales may seem confusing when you start learning guitar. There are so many, with so many different, notes, it is hard to connect them all and keep them separate. Even skilled musicians sometimes mistake scales or mix up different scale properties when they learn how to play guitar.

It’s okay.

In this article, we will talk about how you can take your scale patterns and connect them throughout the neck.

This will help you to develop muscle memory as well as memorization by sight, allowing you to keep all of your scales in your head at all times.

The first thing that you should do is commit a single scale to memory. This will be the first step in learning your first guitar scale pattern.

The easiest scale to start off with is the C Major scale. This is due to the C Major scale containing absolutely no flats or sharps (accidental notes). The C Major consists of the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.

To play the C Major scale in a basic position upon the neck, you need to start off with the note C. This note is located on the third fret of your A string. Next, you need to find D. The D is the fifth fret of your A string. While it may seem convenient to play the open E as the next note for E, it won’t work, as we need the C as the lowest sounding note when playing the C Major scale.

Our E is located on the second fret of the D string. Next we need F, which is located on the third fret of the D string. Now on to G which is the fifth fret of the D string. To get to A, we need to move one string higher, to the G string.

The A is located on the second fret of the G string. To come to our B, we need to move to the fourth fret of the G string. To bring it full circle, all we need to do is move up to the fifth fret of the G string for the note C.

Now that we have the pattern, we need to learn how to connect it to another, similar pattern of the C Major scale. The way to do this is to find the next note of the scale, which would be D. We can find D on the third fret of the B string. Now, the same as before, we play the notes until we reach our tonic yet again.

This will take our original C Major pattern (third and fifth frets of A string, second third and fifth frets of D string, second fourth and fifth frets of G string) and connect it to a whole new pattern (fifth fret of G string, third fifth and sixth frets of B string, fifth seventh and eighth frets of high E string). This gives us more range in which to play our simple C Major scale.

Now that you know how to connect scale patterns, try taking some basic scale that you know, and connect them to new patterns of the same scale. Have fun, and good luck!

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