MAJOR DIATONIC SCALE

Most modern music is not written with chromatic scales, buth with a more manageble, pleasant sounding, eight note scale called a Diatonic Scale.  The Diantonic Major Scale with its familiar DO-RE-MI-FA-SO-LA-TI-DO sound, Illustration Three, is the scale used to create the vast majority or the music guitarists encounter daily.  It is from the Diatonic Major Scale that the minor, the pentatonic, and our modal system of scales originate.  To understand the art of improvisation, we must therefore fully understand the step pattern, the degree name and number, of the diatonic scale and be able to play scales in five patterns on the fingerboard.

The Major Diatonic Scale is a predetermined pattern of eight notes arranged in five whole steps and two half steps.  A half-step is the distance of one fret on the guitar: a whole step is the distance of two frets.  A Major Diatonic Scale is a succession of tones arranged in a fixed step, half-step pattern.  The distance between notes remains constant and the interval between notes in fixed and will not change even if the music is played in another key.  We recognize a sone and can hum the melody, regardless of the key in which it is performed, thus making it possible to transpose a piece of music to different keys.

A diatonic scale may be built commencing on any of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale.  We have twelve major scales called keys.  The sound of the Major Diatonic Scale is due to the placement of the half-steps between the 3rd and 4th notes and between the 7th and 8th notes.  The resulting two-tone, interval between the 1st and 3rd notes create the scales major characteristics.