In previous blog posts, you’ve had a brief introduction to the G Major Scale. Now, we look at the G Major Scale in a bit more detail, and explore how to play it across all six strings of the guitar, rather than just from one G note to the next G (which is referred to as one octave).

The notes in the G Major Scale: G A B C D E F# G. Across all six strings this looks like: 6th string (3rd, 5th fret), 5th string (2nd, 3rd, 5th fret), 4th string (2nd, 4th, 5th fret), 3rd string (2nd, 4th, 5th fret), 2nd string (3rd, 5th fret), and 1st string (2nd, 3rd, 5th fret).

The last note (1st string, 5th fret) is the A and we’re playing this extra note beyond the G because it is still part of the G Major Scale. This lets us know how far the scale can be extended within this particular position.

Play the entire scale now from the 6th string (low E) to the 1st string (high E). Try using alternate picking (downstrokes and upstrokes) to improve your technique. When we play the scale in this fashion, you’ll notice we’re hitting a different number of notes on each string – some are 3 notes while some are only 2 notes.

Because there is no uniformity in your ascent and descent, this can be confusing for your right hand, especially as a beginner when you’re trying to learn how to play the guitar. This becomes challenging when you want to break down the scale into smaller chunks for easier practice.

The other way to play a major scale is to regularise what we’re doing across a fixed number of strings – all six strings in this case. We use the same notes as before, but we play a fixed number of notes per string. For the G Major Scale, we’ll follow 3 Notes Per String (NPS).

6th string (3rd, 5th, 7th fret), 5th string (3rd, 5th, 7th fret), 4th string (4th, 5th, 7th fret), 3rd string (4th, 5th, 7th fret), 2nd string (5th, 7th, 8th fret), and 1st string (5th, 7th, 8th fret).

This makes it easier for your right hand as you learn to play in string pairs, and then repeat the right-hand motion for the next string pair, and so on. In terms of strokes, this would look like: Down Up Down Up Down Up.

You’ve now learnt two things – how to play the G Major Scale across all six strings, and how to play it in a slightly more symmetrical and uniform pattern. Experiment and figure out which one you’re more comfortable with. Both are important from the perspective of improving your guitar skills.

As you read through the posts, you’ll become more comfortable with uneven picking patterns which are important to play advanced pieces of music. The technique you learnt in this blog post can be applied to all major scales. Observe the tablature and finger positions, and start practising the G Major Scale across all six strings. In the next post, we’ll look at sixteenth note rhythms. Keep reading and learning.