Guitar Lesson Three

C scale in the first position.

C scale can be played as illustrated in the first position.

Refer to the tab picture. String names are on the left of each line representing a string. The number in the circle tell us which fret to play on that string. We’ll read this left to right, so the first note is on the 3rd fret of the A string, the second note is on the open D string, and so on.

Each fret represents a half step, so notes that are a whole step apart are 2 frets apart and notes that are a half step apart are on adjacent frets (right next to one another). One of the coolest things about a guitar however is that you can play the same note on different strings! What that means to guitar players is that if we want to play a certain note and we’re already playing a note on one string, we can move to another string for the new note! That’s how we start to build chords.

Major scales follow the pattern “whole step, whole step, half step,
whole step, whole step, whole step, half step”. Playing the C scale from the third fret of the A string then, we would play notes on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th and 15th frets

Your challenge: smoothly play the C major scale ascending and descending one octave, using the chart as a reference. Make sure that each of the notes you play is the same length as every other note and they move smoothly up and down the scale without any gaps. hint: play sloooooooooowly!