Scales and Inversions

      This is just a little primer for upcoming posts so that those who are unfamiliar with music theory can still follow along and maybe learn a little along the way.  It's always a wonderful feeling when something finally clicks.  So today, we'll take a look at major scales and various inversions. 

   The basic building block of scales are whole steps and half steps.  On the guitar, a whole step is going up two frets and a half step is going up one fret.

    The major scales consists of 8 notes and will start and end on the same note, also called the I (one),  the tonic or root.  The formula is whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step.  What ever note you start on, you can just apply the formula and get major scale.  So lets start on A, 6th string, 5th fret.  Go up a whole step to the 7th fret B.  Then go up a whole step to the 4th fret C# on the 5th string, a half step to 5th fret D, whole step to 7th fret E. Then go a whole step to the 4th fret F# on the 4th string, a whole step the 6th G#, then a half fret to the 7th fret A.  You just played and A Major scale.  What ever note you start on on the 6th string, down to 1st fret F, you can use the same shape you just played to play a major scale.  All A based chords are built off of those 7 notes (I know you just played 8 notes, but the first and last were the same note, just an octave apart.

      So what are these inversions all this hip jazz guys talk about.  When you play an A Barre chord in 5th position on the 6th string, its known as being in root position, that is, the A is the lowest note.  If you put the third scale degree as the lowest note, in this case C#, you now have a first inversion.  If you put the the 5th scale degree, in this case E, as the lowest note, you have a second inversion.  As you can see, this is kinda like math.  Everything builds off the scale, if you don't understand the scale and if you don't know where the notes are on the fretboard, your going to feel like your searching for a black cat in a dark closet. 

      There's a lot more to inversions than what I wrote here, but I just want to give you the basic concept and another idea to play with.