Exploring Guitar Scales

Right after finishing the Chord and Scale Calculator, I had to play with it a little -- actually I've been using it a lot ever since. Anyway, I stumbled upon the Phrygian Dominant scale in F#. (Load it on the calculator, so you can see what I'm talking about) I noticed that the finger pattern on the bottom four strings (D, G, B, E) was extremely simple. The first thing I did was to try to find some chords in the scale, because with some of the more unusual scales, the chords aren't well defined. The main requirement for finding chords is that all the notes in the chord are also in the scale. Secondly, there should be a sufficiently large interval between the notes of the chord. For example a major chord is made up of three notes with the formula 1-3-5. Between the first and third tone, there is a major 3rd interval, which equals 4 half steps, and between the third and fifth tone there is a minor 3rd, which equal 3 half steps. So when you're trying to find chords, you're trying to find intervals in the range of about 3-5 half steps. Thirdly, it has to sound good. Experiment a little, and see how it sounds.

Since I was in the key of F#, I first had to find an F# chord, so I tried the simplest finger pattern suggested by the calculator -- F#7: xx4320, where the "x's" indicate not to play the top two strings (E and A), and the numbers indicate the fret. For example, the 4 indicates playing playing F# on the D string between the 3rd and 4th fret; 3 indicates A# on the G string, etc.

The next two chords I found were also inspired by the simple finger patterns of the scale: D6: xx0432; G6: xx5430.

From there it was a simple matter of experimenting with rhythm and arpeggio (playing the notes of a chord individually). Later, I broke out of arpeggio and wrote some simple melodies. I had to experiment with the chords to find which sounded good with the melodies.

After all is said and done, I composed a little tune with the scale. You can hear a computer rendered version by clicking here. Below is the sheet music and tablature for the introduction, or you can get the full tablature by clicking here.

A Tune in F# Phrygian Dominant

Much more to come!