45 Guitar Scales In One Solo

by Sinisa Cekic

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  • Difficulty: 10

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  • Welcome to a new lesson - all about scales!

    What is a Scale?

    - It is an ascending or descending series of notes where each note is referred to as a scale degree. Scales may be described as tonal, modal, diatonic, derived or synthetic, and by the number of tones included. The musical scale is based on octaves. Standard western scales have 12 notes per octave. Notes in the scale are separated by whole and half step intervals of tones and semitones, so scales in traditional Western music consist of seven notes, made up of a root note and six other scale degrees whose pitches lie between the root and its first octave. Note that you will often hear 8 tones in a scale - but the 8th tone is actually a repeated 'first' (or root note).

    On a side note, Non-Western (or Exotic, Eastern, Arab etc) scales, use tones half-way between western notes, leading to 24 notes. India has 22 notes, but what is most interesting is that the distribution of notes within the octave also varies! Music of India theoretically offers about 40 tunings, imagine that! (None of these scales are covered in this lesson.)

    Although mathematics are involved in the sphere of music, nobody for sure knows how mathematical relationships work in relation to tones and scales.

    There are over 1000 musical scales worldwide, it is simply impossible to find and learn all, mostly because of different tunings and playing approaches.

    Many cultures use simple scales, two tones, three, four or five tones. American Indians use pentatonic scales - and China, Tibet, Mongolia, Oceania, India, Russia, and Africa do too. Pentatonic scales are the most widely used musical scales in the world.

    When watching this lesson, you will realize that all these scales have something in common: sonority, but also uniqueness as well as stunning similarities.

    Many of these scales have different names but the same tonality. This is explained in the accompanying parts.

    Unlike most composers who write their songs and disregard which scales will be used, here I'm doing the opposite - I have made a composition which is adapted to the scales. Enjoy!

    Numbers indicate video parts in which the scale is shown:

    1. Major natural - video part 2
    2. Minor natural - video part 3
    3. Major pentatonic - video part 4
    4. Diminished - video part 5
    5. Harmonic Minor - video part 6
    6. Blues Major - video part 7
    7. Hungarian minor - video part 8
    8. Balinese - video part 9
    9. Minor pentatonic - video part 10
    10. Bartok - video part 11
    11. Whole tone - video part 12
    12. Arabian - video part 13
    13. Dorian mode - video part 14
    14. Ethiopian Tizita minor - video part 15
    15. Chromatic - video part 16
    16. Phrygian mode - video part 17
    17. Enigmatic - video part 18
    18. Iwato - video part 19
    19. Byzantine - video part 20
    20. Lydian mode - video part 21
    21. Super Lydian mode - video part 22
    22. Mixolydian mode - video part 23
    23. Kumoi - video part 24
    24. Locrian mode - video part 25
    25. Locrian minor mode - video part 26
    26. Neapolitan minor - video part 27
    27. Neapolitan major - video part 28
    28. Spanish - video part 29
    29. Spanish 8 tone - video part 30
    30. Melodic minor - video part 31
    31. Aeolian mode - video part 32
    32. Hirajoshi - video part 33
    33. Hindu - video part 34
    34. Japanese - video part 35
    35. Altered - video part 36
    36. Yo - video part 37
    37. In Sen - video part 38
    38. BeBop - video part 39
    39. Yona Nuki major - video part 40
    40. Blues minor - video part 41
    41. Half Whole - video part 42
    42. Hungarian major - video part 43
    43. Algerian - video part 44
    44. Persian - video part 45
    45. Symmetrical - video part 46

    Video parts 47-52 cover free improvisation using various scales.
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