The Rules of Playing a Chromatic Scale on Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Joe Wiles with the Rock and Roll Conservatory. On behalf of Expert Village I'm going to teach you your chromatic scale. Now your chromatic scale, it's kind of like your musical alphabet. Okay, like the normal alphabet goes ABCDEFGHI blah blah blah blah blah. Your musical alphabet ends at G. It goes ABCDEFG, then cycles back around to the beginning and starts with A again. That's the first rule you'll have to remember. The second rule you have to remember is that every one of those notes, I should say most of those notes have a sharp. So, it would go A, A sharp, B, and the B note does not have a sharp, so you go straight to C. Then C sharp, D, D sharp, E. E note also doesn't have a sharp, so it goes straight from E to F. F sharp, G, G sharp, then cycles back around to A. To remember, just remember that the E and the B note don't have sharps. Now if somebody comes along that's trained and schooled and tells you, "well of course there's an E sharp or there's a B sharp." That's just music theory stuff. You don't have to worry about it now, because the method I'm teaching you is just a quick method in order to get you to express yourself quickly, okay? Again, that's A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, then cycles back around to A. In our next segment we're going to take that chromatic scale and apply it to the guitar, okay?"