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Playing Simple Scales

MandoLessons Lesson Supplement

In this lesson you will learn how to play your first set of scales. These scales
are the G major scale, the D major scale, the A major Scale, and the C
major scale. If you are unfamiliar with the basic concept behind music
theory (i.e. notes of a scale, sharps and flats, etc.), please get comfortable
with the information at www.mandolessons.com/lessons/musictheory.html.

The first scale in the video, the G scale, can be played by hitting the
following notes from the lowest note to the highest note. The numbers inside
the circles represent what finger you use (1 being your index finger, 2 your
middle finger, 3 your ring finger, and 4 your pinky). When you see a 0 inside
a circle, that means that this note is the string played without fretting any
note (also known as an open note). In the diagram, the thick black
horizontal line at the top represents the nut (the piece of white material
holding the strings off the fretboard near the top of the mandolin), and each
consecutive thin black horizontal line represents a fret (the shiny bars of
metal on your mandolins fretboard):

The G Scale

Now, the great thing about the mandolin is that once you

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know one major scales you know all the major scales (in theory). This is
because the mandolin is tuned in fifths. What does that mean? Well, I will
get into what it means in terms of music theory in a different lesson, but the
general idea is as follows. If you count the open note of your G major scale
as 1, the second note of the scale (an A note) as 2, the third (a B note) as 3,
the fourth (a C note) as 4, and the fifth note (a D) as five, something
happens. When you get to that fifth note, you stop playing on the lowest
string (the G string) and move to the next highest string (the D string). The
great thing about this little phenomenon is that it can be applied to every
other scale on the mandolin, look at the next two scales:

The D Scale The A Scale

As you can see, the scale pattern for the

G, D, and A scales are all the same. The open string is followed by the
second fret, followed by the fourth fret, followed by the fifth, followed by the
next highest string, etc.

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While this scale pattern works for every scale, think about playing the C
scale. the C note does not lie on an open string, and your first finger would
have to start on the 5th fret of the G string, creating all sort of problems
which will be addressed in later lessons. Therefore, we must stray from this
pattern and we get the following pattern for the C major scale:

The C Scale

Again, we can use the great versatility of the mandolin and its connection
with perfect fifths to create another scale from the same scale pattern. A
fifth above the bottom C is a G (the high note in the G scale we learned
earlier), and therefore, we can move the entire scale pattern to start on that
higher G. As a result we get another G scale up an entire octave from the
first. Then, By combining the two G scales we have learned, we can play a g
scale starting from the open low G string and end on the 3rd fret of the high
E string. Check it out:

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High G Scale 2 Octave G Scale

And there you have it, simply from the way the mandolin is tuned you can
get more than one scale out of a single scale pattern. Dont expect all of this
to stick in your brain at once, the only road to mastering the mandolin is
through time, energy, and practice practice practice.

Your homework for this lesson is to play around and see if you can figure out
some more scales on your own. Use this lesson, the MandoLessons music
theory page (www.mandolessons.com/lessons/musictheory.html), and your
imagination to figure out some more scales and scale patterns. For example,
start with figuring out the keys of B flat and F.

Questions? Comments? Drop me an email at [email protected]

2008 MandoLessons. No information is to be reproduced without written

permission from MandoLessons