Kevin's Notes

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Kevin Karrick Trio
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Alternate Major Scale Patterns for Reading and Transposing

Reading standard notation has long been a challenge for contemporary guitar players. There are some great methods to read classical and traditional music, but these methods often run out of steam and become frustrating to try and employ for most modern music. I have made a few observations over the years.

1) There are too many choices of position-based scale patterns, and the traditional patterns often do not fit the needed range. The ones I'm speaking of are those based on the shapes of the keys G, C, F, in first position.
2) To know a piece is to master it beyond reading it, and to make conscious choices about where to play phrases or harmonies to get the best effect. This is not what we do when sight reading or reading to learn a new piece.
3) Music that is well written for guitar is great. There is a certain comfort that we can count on. This is how we are taught in virtually all guitar method books. Unfortunately, we almost never see guitar parts as skillfully or conveniently written, as those in method books.
4) Much of time, we are reading a melody from a standard lead/vocal sheet, or something written for piano. Compared to a written vocal or piano melody, our note on the guitar is an octave higher. Worse yet, is when you are given a lead sheet, but told that the singer actually sings it in a different key. Transposing quickly becomes a necessary skill. A few times, I have played with orchestras using a "rhythm" chart, which includes various parts from the score, as an indicator of what's going on throughout the orchestra. You not only have to sight read it, but invent a guitar part in 2 or 3 passes:) So even when reading, we need big, big ears! No time to worry about scale patterns.
5) When I play single lines on the guitar, I mostly lead from lower frets on the lower strings to higher frets on the higher strings. This is what sounds good to me. Most guitarists will agree, I think. This also gives us greater range.

So at some point I realized that, although I know all the position scale patterns across 12 frets, I basically divide the 12 frets into two sub regions. One has the root of the key center on the 6th string, and one has the root on the 5th string. Each region extends 6 frets. When necessary, I will jump from one to the other. When thinking in terms of reading and these regions, a light bulb came on, when I realized these two regions are shaped very similarly, unlike the hodge podge of standard scale pattern shapes, and cover the whole 12 frets (duh!). Their shapes are like playing in the keys of E or A in the first position. These scale patterns are not new. In fact, they're very popular with some heavy metal rockers, because of their 3-note per string organization I imagine, for those bullet-speed riffs.

Using these as a basis for reading has several benefits. It's mostly about easier decisions. These two patterns are organized similarly, and simply, so you don't have to reorganize your entire thought process of where the notes lie. Also, you can tranpose keys or play up an octave much easier than with the traditional patters. There is much more that can be illustrated with a video, which I will work in in the future. Here are the two moveable scale patterns that I use for reading music.

Scales Major Alternate Forms

For past entries, visit the Clinic Page.