Since all four assessments have been completed for this class (Comfort, Research, Graded and Final). Robin decided, instead of finishing the class, he would continue it.
He said this would be beneficial to all of us (and it definitely is!!) because we are going to learn about scales and improvisation.
This scale topic he is doing now, is what we would normally get in the HND course but he thought it would be cool if we learnt it now incase we are going on to study HND.
For this lesson Robin focussed on the major scales. Which are the scales I am most familiar with.
THE MAJOR SCALES:
I tried to have a look at Major scales before I took the music course, so I have a very ruff idea of them already.
First of all I had no idea that there are seven positions of one scale on the Guitar! The scales Robin will ask us to play are going to be the very familiar ones such as, A - B - C - D - E - F - G. So know sharpened or flattened major keys.
The first key I started to learn in this class was G major. The positions are:
Position 1 - (E) 3 - 5 - 7 (A) 3 - 5 -7 (D) 4 - 5 - 7 (G) 4 - 5 - 7
Position 2 - (E) 5 - 7 - 8 (A) 5 - 7 -9 (D) 5 - 7 - 9 (G) 5 - 7 - 9
Position 3 - (E) 7 - 8 - 10 (A) 7 - 9 -10 (D) 7 - 9 - 10 (G) 7 - 9 - 11
Position 4 - (E) 8- 10 - 12 (A) 9 - 10 -12 (D) 9 - 10 - 12 (G) 9 - 11 - 12
Position 5 - (E) 10 - 12 - 14 (A) 10 - 12 - 14 (D) 10 - 12 - 14 (G) 11 - 12 - 14
Position 6 - (E) 12 - 14 - 15 (A) 12 - 14 - 15 (D) 12 - 14 - 16 (G) 12 - 14 - 16
Position 7 - (E) 14 - 15 - 17 (A) 14 - 15 - 17 (D) 14 - 16 - 17 (G) 14 - 16 - 17
WHAT I 'M DOING:
So far I have been practicing all the major scale first. I think they are the easiest out of the three we need to learn.
I have been going over them with Colin (my bass tutor). And he has been explain how everything is related to the major scale. Once I know the major scale really well, then I can slowly figure out the other scales.
At home I have been practicing all seven positions of the G major scale with a metronome. I have been practicing with 140 bpm as crotchets. This is helping so much because I can now go through each postion at this speed without stopping.
HOW I'M COPING:
Learning all the positions of the major scale will improve me so much! This is what I have wanted to do since the start of the course. It's basically the only thing that will help me with improvising. One of my main aims was, to learn how to improvise.
I am so excited to see how well I learn all these scales and how my improvising progresses.