We most often play music in what’s called a key, or a decided set of notes.
Choosing a key is like putting a filter over the 12 notes of the
chromatic scale. We're now refining the palette of notes that we will choose from.
The key of a song is most commonly a major scale.
The major scale is a 7
note scale, made up of the intervals whole, whole, half, whole, whole,
whole, half. A half step is one fret on the guitar, while a whole step
is two. This series of whole and half steps can be started from any of
the 12 notes in the chromatic scale, so we have 12 possible major keys.
We're going to explore this in the examples below.
Scale #1 — C Major, one octave, up and down
Scale #2 — F Major, 1 octave, up and down
Scale #2 — G Major, 2 octaves, up and down
Start by choosing one of the scales above. Jazz guitarist John Abercrombie used to have me choose a set of notes, and then treat them as a meditation. You play through them a few times mindfully to really hear the notes and how they relate to each other. Once you start to feel comfortable with the scale, write a melody of your own. Like last time, try to really “hear” each note in your head before you play it. This time the notes you choose will be limited to the scale that you chose. Record this melody as a video or voice memo on your phone.