Major on Open Strings: Bass Guitar Scales

Video Transcript

"Ok, so we just talked about in the previous section, the whole step and half-step pattern. Let's review that again. Over here, when we made C our majors, or 1 our starting point, we had the pattern whole step- whole step- half-step- whole step- whole step- whole step- half-step. This pattern right here, applied to any note will give you that note's major pattern. So here's an example right down here. As we can see, we had C up here and the representation of C. Now if we put an F# in there, remember F# could be on the E string between the F and then G... we have F#- G#- A#- B- C#- D#- E# and F#. All different notes but the sharps and the naturals theme to the pattern of whole steps and half-steps. Let's look at our open strings now. Try to apply that pattern. We'll see that once we know one string, it works for each one. So, we start on open E, ok, a whole step from there is F#...a whole step from there is G#...Half-step to A...whole step to B...whole step to C#...9th fret...whole step to D# and a half-step to E. So, 1st fret, 2nd fret, 4th fret, 5th fret, 7th fret, 9th fret, 11th fret and 12th. On any string (plays) gives you those string's major patterns. Each note will be different. For example, for D, we have D-E-F#G-A-B-C#-D. Use those tricks that we talked about where sharp is one step up from a natural note and flat is one step down to determine what notes are being played when we are creating this pattern of whole steps and half-steps on open strings."