The Most Important Scale I Ever Learned

- Rob Chapman is teaching a beginners the most important scale he ever learned. It's the pentatonic scale and it's going to open up all sorts of musical doors for beginners. - A beginner is doing E diatonic scale. The scale starts on an A string and allows the player to drone an open bass string. It teaches the beginner to listen to the difference between the droned note underneath and the scale notes. - Speaker A thinks the placement of the fingers just behind the fret makes a big difference to the overall tonality and the ability of the instrument to ring and give you the full sound of the guitar. He invites people to try playing this scale with legato. - Speaker A asks English students to learn the scale and make it minor. Then Speaker A shows the minor version and asks students to take it easy.

Foreign. I am Rob Chapman. Today I'm going to be teaching you the most important scale I ever learned. This also happened to be the first scale I ever learned and no, it wasn't the pentatonic scale. I lucked out because both of my parents were musicians. Mum's pianist and my father is a classical guitar player. He. If you are a complete beginner, this is a brilliant place to start. It's going to open up all sorts of musical doors for you. If you are partway through your journey, don't worry, still going to be useful for you. There are all sorts of interesting knickknacks contained within this scale that will benefit you on your journey to understanding all sorts of things, from application of modes through to some basic techniques. Let's get started and I'll give you some tuning notes. I'm in standard tuning for the people. Normally I'm an E flat. Today. It's a difference. We're in 2025, why not E? So we're going to do E diatonic scale. So we're going to start with an open E string. We're going to let that drone throughout this scale. This is one of the main differences of this scale is that it allows you to drone an open bass string. And then you'll notice I'm starting with the second finger on the seventh fret up on the A string. So we'll play that. We're then going to place the little finger down here on the ninth fret. A string. If you find that difficult, make sure that your thumb is placed behind that. Your wrist is relaxed, your shoulder is dropped. So that my hand is like this. See, that's how it looks. I haven't got my thumb over here, otherwise it would be impossible to reach. Well, it's harder to reach with a little finger. So we're going to come down A string to the D string. That's the sixth fret. We're then going to do the seventh fret, little finger to the ninth. So so far we've got. I'm lifting my fingers high to show you what's underneath, but really I keep them close to the fretboard. Down again with the first finger on the G string at the sixth fret. Third finger to the eighth fret, little finger to the ninth. So this is the first octave. Slide the little finger atone two frets. Now, I'm not restriking that to do it. I'm going. So that slide is the notes? Yeah. Then first finger comes down to The B string, 9th fret yeah. 9th fret, 2nd finger, little finger. 12th. 1st finger comes down. 3rd finger on the 11th little finger. Finishes it on the 12th fret. This is the hard part. When you're coming back up, you've got the first couple of strings. Need to bring your little finger over to the 11th fret. G string. Pick it, slide it. Now let's play this. And drone the E string. If it begins to fade, re pluck. The really cool thing about this scale is that it starts on an A string. And this is unusual for a beginner. Normally when you start playing the guitar, the scales that you learn are rooted on the E string. Most people learning a major scale would learn a three note per string scale rooted on the E string, something like this. But the scale that I started with was starting on the A string root. And there's a really cool thing that kind of comes from rooting your scale on the A string, which is that you can drone your E string underneath you. This teaches you lots of different things. The first thing it teaches you is to listen to the difference between the droned note underneath and the scale notes. Let's just do that now. It's become music. It's not just a scale. It's not just a collection of notes that you can just hammer off in a pattern. It's become music. That was the most important lesson that I got from this scale. I would spend a long time just noodling the notes and finding interesting melodies and shapes and patterns that sounded nice over that droned E note. Then of course, I started to become curious and I would move my scale shape. If I keep the pattern the same, but maybe just shift it down two steps. This is the scale, and to your ear, it will sound exactly the same major sounding scale. But when I drone that E, the measurement between that droned E note and the scale steps has created a different kind of sound. It's given us different Dorian actually, which is a minor mode with a major sixth degree. All I did was just move the shape down two steps. In fact, you can do that seven different ways. All you would need to do is if I'm choosing that E is my. That was like firing an arrow. If I chose the E is my root, then maybe I would place my third note on an E. So I put my third note of the scale on an E note. So now my scale shape would be here. I could do the full scale. But if I play that E note suddenly, it's going to feel completely. It makes you play differently, doesn't it? It makes you feel something completely different. Each of the notes of that scale, if you place them on an E, will give you each of the seven diatonic major modes, which are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. If you'd like to experience Locrian, it's really fun. Just shift your scale shape, pattern 1 semitone forwards, and unleash hell. It's horrible. I hate everything. Everything about Locrian is just a horrible, horrible feeling and a vibe. But it would be really fun to experiment with placing the fourth note of that scale on an E, because that would give you Lydian, which is a beautiful, almost more major than major type scale. Let me just show you how you would do that. So, 1, 2, 3, 4. I want that note to go on an E. Well, if you can't, if you don't know the notes, it's easy. Just play the E until you find the same sound. That's why it's important to develop your hearing. So this is the fourth note of my scale. So now my scale shape would go if I drone the E. That's Lydian, folks, one of my favorite sounding modes. So it was through experimenting with this two octave. It's a major scale, but it's diatonic. Move it around. It's a beautiful device to experiment with and unlock the mysteries of moving notes around a root note. The other thing, and this I think is something that's quite important, is that starting with my second finger, and I'm doing a lot of the legwork with my little finger, so I'm going second finger, little finger, then 1, 2 little finger, and then 1, 3 little finger, and then the slide is with my little finger. Again, I spent a lot of time playing this scale, and therefore a lot of time went into my little finger. It's. It's a. A lot of it's on the pinky. And I think it gave me a much stronger little finger and more of a sense of awareness of its placement because I was focusing so hard on getting that slide. And then when you finish getting it there, to slide back again, that focus of attention on the placement of my little finger. And then eventually learning to play this scale with legato really got my little finger super strong and agile and aware of its placement. And I think the placement of the fingers just behind the fret make a big difference to the overall tonality and the ability of the instrument to ring and give you the full sound of the guitar. I often see players who are a little Bit sloppy. But if you weren't aware of it or even thought about it, you might just think you could put your finger anywhere, you know, behind the fret. Makes a difference, in my opinion. It makes a difference anyway. So I would challenge you to try playing this scale with legato. So that would be just a pick and a hammer. And then pick whenever you change string. Hammer, hammer, pick, hammer, hammer, slide. Pick, hammer, hammer, pick, hammer, hammer. And then coming back, you're going to need to pull off. So don't forget super tips. When you are pulling off to the finger behind, make sure that in your mind, your mind, bullets are slightly pushing up with the finger you are pulling off to. Do you understand? If this finger is pulling down, I don't want to be pulling this one down or the note will sharpen. So pull a little in your mind. Pull up with this one like that. And then the note you're pulling off to will stay static. Needs to be clean, crisp, perfect. Yeah. There are other things that you can do. I will give you some insane exercises in the next video that will strengthen hammer and pull and legato. It's a crazy exercise, but I think this is a really good starting point. Learn that scale. And for my final parting help for you, English, I can. Let's make it minor. So we're just going to take that scale and extend back one fret. The major third. The third note. So see that major minor. And then rather than playing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, it's going to be a minor 6. And then rather than playing that 7, it's going to be a flatted or minor 7. Okay, folks, here's the minor version. I'm kidding. You don't have to do that. Alrighty. Thank you for watching the video. Hope you enjoyed it. Please, like, subscribe, fire a comment. Do anything to appease the almighty algorithm before it's too late. Take it easy. Choppers out.