The 12 Major Scales for the Bass Guitar
Scalier than a Lounge of Lizards and a Den of Snakes
This is a companion piece to these two recent articles:
An Introduction to Triads for the Bass Guitar
Sherlocking the Octaves, and How to Play Any Note With Any Chord
In the following images, I rectangle places on the fretboard where you can play a run of notes across the strings using just your index and ring fingers. Some people call this a “box shape.” You don’t need to memorize 24 of these scale maps (major and minor versions of the 12 keys) — just memorize the patterns that apply across keys, namely:
For major scales, start with your middle finger on the root/tonic/eponymous note (IOW, the A note for an A scale, on fret 5 of the E string), where you can play the do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do notes. Then move down two frets (move your index finger to fret 2) and you have that above-mentioned box shape; also or alternatively, from the base position (index finger on fret 4), you can move up three frets (index finger moving from fret 4 to fret 7) and you’ve got the same “box” pattern to play.
Speaking Writing of patterns: Since I’m a student virtually attending Scott’s Bass Lessons Academy, and many of their excellent instructors have what I generically think of as a “British accent” (because I can’t tell the difference between an English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or even Australian accent), I’ve been hearing the word “pattern” pronounced lately a lot as if it is spelled “patton,” which always makes me think of General George, which makes me think of George C. Scott, which brings me back to Scott's Bass Lessons. FWIW. It’s even easier to find a metapattern (a pattern of these patterns) in the minor scales. The box shape can be found with your index finger on the root/tonic/eponymous-to-the-scale note and then again five frets up. IOW, for the G scale, you start with your index finger on fret 3 to access this box pattern, and from there can move up five frets, so that your index finger is on fret 8 for more of the similar. And, of course, 12 frets up works also (in this case, fret 15).
The frets where the patterns begin are numbered along the bottom of each image.Without further prosing (using prose to hypnotize), here are the charts:
THE 12 MAJOR SCALES
