Scale Visuals of a C Major Scale on a Bass Guitar

Video Transcript

"RYAN LARSON: Now we're going to play our C major scale and it's in open position, but you want to start with your second finger on C because we're going to use open notes [PLAYS C MIXOLYDIAN] but we're not going to be utilizing these frets back here. So we want our first finger right here on this fret [PLAYS C MAJOR SCALE], and then we can have our pinkie on our high C, which is way up here on our 6th fret. So if we start on frettings, we got 3, open, 2, 3, open, 2, 4, 5. 5, 4, 2, open, 3, 2, open, 1. Again, since our pinky is here, we can also play it. The open notes over here will have 3-5, 2-3-5, 2-4-5. It's really up to you if you like using the open notes, which a lot of bass players do, and that's your C major scale. And we're going to go through that and number it 1 through 7. It's a seven-note scale. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1. And each one of these different chord changes that we're going to be reading through, they're all going to come out of the C major scale, and we pick tunes that stay particularly in the major scale. Of course, not every tune is going to stay in the scale, but if you go through and get this down, you'll be able to play through a lot of standards and you'll get a lot of different ideas as to how to approach different chords. And then when you run it through 12 keys, when it modulates on the music, you'll be able to go through and figure out on your own how to play through these simple chord changes."