Learning Guitar Scales

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So far in the lesson "Guitar Chord Construction (major chords)", we've learned how to construct any major chord from the major scale and also how to follow effective steps to learn and play them as quickly and accurately as possible. So make sure you understand these well after learning guitar scales.

While major chords are not the only chords used in music, there many other chords and everyone of them sounds and plays differently. Other shapes of major chords are major seventh (major 7th) chords and the only difference between these and major chords is as the name refers, the 7th note. If we play the major scale in the key of A (A - B - C# - D - E - F# - G#), while the major chord will be the combination of the 1st (root), the 3rd and the 5th notes, the major 7th chord will be the combination of these notes, the 1st (root), the 3rd, the 5th and the 7th.

A - B - C# - D - E - F# - G#
1 -  2 -  3  - 4  - 5 -  6  -  7
A         C#          E                     (Major chord)
A         C#          E            G#    (Major 7th chord)

It looks like this on the fretboard:

E-------5(A)---------------------------------------------------
B-------5(E)---------------------------------------------------
G-------6(C#)--------------------------------------------------
D-------6(G#)--------------------------------------------------
A-------7(E)--------------------------------------------------
E-------5(A)--------------------------------------------------

A lot of people think that the major 7th chord is the same as the 7th chord, well there is a tiny difference between them and it affects the sound hugely. The only difference is the the major 7th chord is built with the 7th note, while the 7th chord is build with the b7 note.

So an A 7th chord will have these notes (A + C# + E + G), we flattened the 7th note from G# to G. Now let's see how it looks on guitar's fretboard:


E-------5(A)---------------------------------------------------
B-------5(E)---------------------------------------------------
G-------6(C#)--------------------------------------------------
D-------5(G)--------------------------------------------------
A-------7(E)--------------------------------------------------
E-------5(A)--------------------------------------------------

That's it, who says learning guitar scales or music theory in general are hard to learn.