Ukulele Scales: Major Scales
April 23, 2008
With all the stuff on the net about the ukulele, there’s very little about how to play scales on the ukulele. It’s a bit strange as scales are the building blocks of music in general and chords in particular. I wrote an ebook about how ukulele chords are made up, so I won’t go into it now, but the more you understand scales, the more you be able to adapt chords and add single note runs to your playing to make it more effective and interesting.
A good knowledge of scales is essential for improvising. If the chords you are playing over are in C major, you can play any of the notes in the C major scale and they will work. Of course, some will work better than others in certain places.
The most important scale is the major scale. This is the most common scale you’ll hear. It crops up in all the most well known songs from nursery rhymes to national anthems. The sound of the scale is completely natural.
The major scale is made up of eight notes with a set distance between the notes. You start on the first note of the scale (the root) and move up two frets to the second note, then another two to the third, up one to the third note, up two to the fourth, up two to the fifth, up two to the sixth, up two to the seventh and finally up one to the octave. The distances are: 2,2,1,2,2,2,1.
You don’t have to memorise all these scales individually. It is much more important to remember patterns on the fingerboard and where the root note occurs in these patterns.
Take the D scale for example. Start on the D note at the second fret and move up the scale like this to the next D:
If you play this same pattern up two frets (so the E is the first note you play), you’ll have an E major scale.
The same goes for any other pattern you can spot in these scale maps.
C Major
C# (Db) Major
D Major
D# (Eb) Major
E Major
F Major
F# (Gb) Major
G Major
G# (Ab) Major
A Major
A# (Bb) Major
B Major
Holy most useful post ever, Batman!
Outside of some enharmonic inaccuracies that will bother me, very helpful.
p9000: Thanks. Glad you like it. Every time I try something a little different I wonder if people are going to say, “What’s this crap? Get back to doing theme tunes.”
MC Safety: A bad workman blames his tools. And it’s definitely the fault of my tools.
This is good stuff – can you write something on the modes as well? Loads of stuff on internet about modes for guitar, but not much for uke..
Yeah, I might go on to modes, Ed. Once I’m done with the more obvious scales.
Scale maps = very useful :)
But dont stop the Theme Tunes either!!
Ive been meaning to ask this for a while…
How about ‘Murder She Wrote?’
/gets coat :\
Great Success, Al!
You needed them on here to make the site complete.
Thanks a bunch, dude!
JOE
zym: And you had the nerve to mock me for doing Last of the Summer Wine.
Joe: Thanks. The site is a LOOOONG way from complete.
[...] I’m going to stick with the natural minor scale. The big advantage is that if you know your major scales on the ukulele, you don’t have to learn anything new. The notes in the A minor scale are exactly the same as [...]
I don’t understand the scale maps at all. Read the tabs and whipped right through them. As to the maps, what do they represent? I agree that there are plenty of notes on the fretboard and they all have names but that’s all I could figure out.
I second Jon with the not understanding of the scale maps.
Jon and Rilrod: I’ll try to come up with a post explaining them.
hey i’ve only been playing scince christmas but i have found a few things that i can play, although a bunch of stuff you’ve done is like way hard. but anyway i was wondering if you can get like pentatonic scales on a uke or is that purely a guitar thing?
Hi Mr Bastard. Yes, pentatonic works fine on the uke. I’ve already got the pentatonics mapped out, but I need to come up with a better explanation of how to use them.
I was told there would be no math involved.Theory makes us stronger.Thanks
Sorry to make you count up to 8, Brian ;)
can you print out the scale for the baritone uke…or how can I convert it.
Thanks,
Jafar
JAFAR: I may well do it on Baritone Ukulele Hunt at some point.