 Guitar and Excel. Pentatonic and major or minor scale positions worksheet. Get ready because it's time for our guitar scales to... Excel. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook that's okay because we basically built this from a blank worksheet but we did so in a prior section so if you want to build this from a blank worksheet you may want to begin back there. However, you don't necessarily need access to this workbook if looking at this from a music theory standpoint because we'll simply use it as a tool to map out the fretboard, give us the notes, give us the scale and chords that we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook though there's currently like nine tabs down below. We've got eight of these example tabs and an OG orange tab. The OG orange tab representing the original worksheet we put together in a prior section. It now acting as our starting point going forward mapping out the entire fretboard giving us our entire musical alphabet, letters, numbers and combining them both in letter and number format. We have a worksheet or a key that can be adjusted with this green cell creating the worksheets on the right providing us the scale that we're in and the notes within that scale and then the chord constructions from the notes in the scale. We then wanted to focus on the C major scale in open position on the fretboard and then map out all of the chord constructions from each of the notes in the C major scale. We did that starting of course with the C major chord open position mapped out on fret one through three. We then represented in colors the one three five and then we looked at the fingering. We did that for all of the chord constructions including then going to the F. We skipped the two and the three so that we can first look at the major chord constructions and then to the G same idea and then we went back to the minors on the two chord, so D minor and then we went to the three chord and constructed an E minor and then to the six chord and constructed an A minor and then we went to that kind of funny one the seven chord and looked at the diminished. Now note that we did this all in open position here which I'm defining as frets one through three. That's kind of a great place to start because then you can really understand this open position not just as a scale shape but as a series of chords that can be combined together to create in essence this scale shape. Now we're going to go to the middle of the guitar and start to think about building actual scale shapes and think about it in terms of scale shapes as opposed to in terms of chords. So this worksheet I know this looks quite intimidating right here because we're mapping out this is what we're going to do to start out with. We mapped out the entire fretboard two times over. It goes 12 frets out and then we mapped it again to 24 frets so that we can clearly see the patterns as the patterns repeat. So first we're just going to map out these patterns on the fretboard and then we're going to dive into specific areas starting with the middle of the fretboard which is going to be on fret five in essence five through eight is basically your major place that we can start learning the fretboard and that's a great place to be because then you can naturally grow learning your positions to both the right and the left whereas if you learn the positions in open position then you're kind of learning in a different way the same things we did before and you can't naturally grow to the left because you're at the nut. You can only go one way. So with the scale positions I would suggest if anyone's new to them or even if you're not it might be best to kind of like think of yourself right in the middle of the fretboard learn that then you can naturally expand your positions both back towards the nut and up towards the other side of the guitar as well. So then once we learn that middle position we will expand both up the guitar and then back the guitar and that means that we'll take a look at this position again in terms of scale positions and then we'll learn the caged system which will basically take the chord constructions and relearn the top bit of the guitar in another format so the top bit of the guitar we will then have looked at in terms of only scales basically and now we're going to look more in depth about the chord positions which are within the scales alright. So we'll actually construct this worksheet this time we'll do the pentatonic scale we'll do the major and pentatonic scale we'll do the major scale we'll see how they fit together and then we'll map out a chord within it so you can kind of get an example of what's going to happen later when we do the caged system and we start moving up shapes and how they fit into the pentatonic scale. So this will be Excel intensive however I think it's good if you're looking at it just from a music theory standpoint because you'll see how we're kind of building out the fretboard as we go and then like I say after we do this we're going to then focus on one specific point the middle of the guitar basically fret 5 here alright so to do this we're going to go to the OG tab I'm going to copy it over I'm going to hold down the control before I do this I would kind of like to add actually this circle of thirds that I added so I'm going to go back to this example tab and we have this circle of thirds that we added which is just basically taking every other note and I'm going to try to copy this into our OG tab so I'm just going to copy this here and go to my OG tab so we have it there I'm not going to put it in the numbered ones but only in the ones where we have the letters and numbers and I'm just going to paste it right there and there we have it so it's taking you know the C and then the E so that looks right and then I'm going to copy this again all the way down not for the numbered one but for the lettered one boom so there we have the C the D and then I'm going to copy that down to here as well we'll say boom right there and then I'm going to go down and go to right here boom and then I'll go down to this one right here we have it there and then I can go down to this one right here have it there and then this one right here okay so there we have it so hopefully I did that well if not we'll fix it later you know it might actually be useful in the modes as well so I'll try to do it I'll try to do it fairly quickly let's go to the modes too and do my circle of thirds over here just on the top ones here I'm going to paste it to the modes and we're going to say boom okay mo modes there's mo are there more modes mo modes to the right alright so there we have all the modes have the circle of thirds at least on that top bit okay that's enough so now let's copy it over I'm going to hold down control left click and drag it to the right there's my og tab I'm going to say this is going to be the practice of the scale overview and I'm going to right click on it and make it blue so let's make it that blue right there that's what I usually do that blue okay and so then we're going to start off the same way because I want to make sure my key is in C we're going to do it in the key of C or you can think of A minor as well if you want or other modes but those are the main two and then I'm going to then at least when we talk about the pentatonic it's going to be in those two okay so then let's select these let's unformat these home tab style format painter and I'm going to get rid of the formatting on this one going to let's go down here and say clear the rules clear the rules get these rules out of here I've had it up to here with your rules let's get rid of the rules on the og tab so we don't have to do that step going forward home tab style I'll get rid of the rules here no rules no rules around here I make my own rules I make my which means I don't have many rules because making rules is hard man I don't know if you've ever noticed that I sat down to make my own rules one time and after like five minutes I was like hope this you who are you to be making rules over me and anyways so then let's go ahead and hide some cells so we're going to hide all of the all of the just the numbered fretboard so we can see the numbers and the letters oh no let's copy of them over first I'm going to select the whole thing I'm going to go from here down to here I'm going to copy that and I want to copy it all the way down because we want to be working in the key of C major each time so I'm just going to copy this and put it here I'm going to copy this and put it there and then just keep on pasting it down throwing down the pasting down boom boom all right and then we're going to go back up top again and now let us hide the numbered only ones so I'm going to put my cursor from one to twelve and right click and hide that stuff hide and then we're going to hide let's go down to let's make it let's make it so I can hide some of this stuff up top so I can I'm going to hide also I'm going to look at 24 frets out which is a longer fret board than we've seen in the past obviously and I'm going to be hiding from let's go from let's go from Z to A J right click and hide that stuff so we got the 24 fret fret board and then our worksheet on the right hand side and then normally when we hide the ones underneath I've been hiding from here down so I'm going to hide from here down yes that is correct so let's hide from here down to the next one I'm going to right click and hide and then I'm going to I'm following this blue line right here so I'm going to go right below that blue line because that's what our custom has been and I'm going to hide all of this stuff right click and hide and then I'm going to go down right to that line again this stuff right click and hide we're going to just put it in the closet just put it in the closet and no one will know that it's a mess in there just throw it in the closet hide and then I'll just you threw everything in the bathroom so what if they need to go to the bathroom they're going to see all the stuff in there you have that's not a place to hide it you have to hide it like in the closet where they're not going to go so they don't see all the stuff that we hid in there let's go up top because it's a mess in here we have to hide all the stuff okay so then let's map this thing out I'm going to hold control and scroll back up a bit and I'm trying to make it large enough so that we can see 24 frets on the fretboard as well as our worksheet or at least a piece of the worksheet so that we can see the notes in the scale because we will be using them to format our fretboard as we do so remember there's only 12 notes in the musical alphabet and most guitars are going to be somewhere a little bit over 12 frets so they have all the notes on each of the strings and then they're going to repeat a little bit and some guitars will be longer than others but not many guitars are going to be 24 frets long however in theory it's useful to kind of extend the neck of the guitar because then we can clearly see the pattern as we're repeating these patterns on both the pentatonic as well as the major scale patterns so we're going to map out the whole pentatonic pattern here and then we'll map out the major scale pattern which the pentatonic pattern will fit into we're going to do it on the entire fretboard first but then we're going to focus in on in future presentations just that fret 5 position if you look at a normal guitar it's going to be around 12 frets because that's when it starts over again and notice the middle of the guitar then is around fret 5 that's why it's quite useful to start learning your scale positions in the middle because you can naturally expand out from that middle both ways but first we'll map out the whole thing so I'm going to go from E all the way over to this E on 24 frets out and we're going to map out but we just need 5, let's do 5 notes I'm going to make these 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 those are the ones that are going to be our pentatonic home tab styles let's make those, no, home tab font let's make those green I'm choosing this green so we're going to start with the pentatonic only 5 out of the 7 notes so I'll select the whole thing again and then home tab styles drop down conditional formatting this is going to be equal to the C and this is going to be green they're all going to be green again we're doing that thing, everybody has the same the same color the same uniform, everything needs to be uniform here everything needs to be uniform people trying to change the stuff on the uniform, no one knows what they look like when that happens I'm tired of that crap so people that are doing that being a piece of crap and now they're working on being the whole pile of crap doing this piece of crap stuff and now they're working on being the whole being the whole pile so then I'm going to skip the 4 and go to the 5 to the G and then we're going to say this is going to be equal to the G and format and then okay then Uno, vase, moss one more time on the A A okay so there we have it so I think that works and now we're going to be focusing in on this position 5 that's going to be kind of like our starting point middle of the fretboard in essence and there's that shape that you might be familiar with if you've learned that's not like a technical term because some people don't use that terminology but a lot of people do they would say this is the major pentatonic or the number one shape and I will use that as well some people will call it a G shape using the G shape that we talked about over here this shape to indicate the pentatonic shapes as well as the major shapes which is kind of a useful tool it's another way to see it so if I go back on over here I could see the G shape is boom boom boom boom boom boom right there so you can kind of the G shape doesn't have all of the notes in the scale or all of the actual fingerings in the scale but you can use that as a home ground but remember this isn't a G though it's a C so when we use the caged system we'll talk more about that later but you can use the caged system for these shapes as well I would learn both learn that this is position one because a lot of people say that or that this is basically the G you can think of it as the G major shape which is currently in a C position because the root note is on the C but we'll talk more about that later right now we're going to then extend the rest of these shapes so let's copy this again and say position number two emphasize kind of like the overlap here so if I go to this position the next position goes right here boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and let's make that one yellow so I'm going to say yellow and the thing I want to point out I'm going to make this a little bit longer so that you can kind of see the over is that there's this overlap in the middle so there's always going to be these overlaps between the positions so just like we saw kind of in the shapes where we saw the G shape can kind of also be an A depending on how you look at those notes an A or a G because they're kind of in between the same thing happens with these pentatonic positions so this is going to be position two and I'll copy this out this is going to get messy looking that's part of the thing I'm trying to point out here is it gets messy and then we're going to say that this one let's make this green and this not that not the fill color make it green and this is going to be position three so now we've got position three let's put it so we can see right there so boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and then you've got to pick then this one to the right here so I got to actually extend that and you can see then that this shape is actually one two three four five frets long and this shape is only four frets long so if you imagine your fingers on each fret it fits perfectly that's kind of the point we're trying to get a shape where our fingers basically fit on the fret can't get it perfect some of them have four and some of them have five because you know they're kind of these two notes are kind of sticking out here but that's kind of the goal we're trying to come up with an economical shape that it has everything that you need within one kind of fingering position and you can think of your hand at that one kind of position so let's do the next one I'll actually name these I'm going to call these you're going to I can call this a one or you might call that a G shape if you want to use that kind of terminology and then this I'm going to call it position two and you might call it an E type of shape if you're if you're going to name it from the cage type system so it caged is spelled C A G E D so if I start on a G then this would be like the E shape and then this one now we're going to go to position number three which is going to be a D type of shape if you're going to use the cage system and you can kind of see it with this little bit right there and then we're going to go to position three I'm on position four now which looks like this let's pull this one up this time so we can see it a little bit better so now it goes boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom if you're going to play it like up and down or down the fret board let's make that a different color on this shape and I'm going to make this one blue and I'm going to say this is going to be a four and so now we add a D we go back around to the C and you can see the position and now we're past the 12th fret and so we're back basically to position one so you can see this is the same position in position one in essence so let's copy that same color and I can say wait a sec that's position one over here and that's why you can see the C shape right here C shape here C shape here so what we've been learning in position one is basically what I would call in open position is what I would call position four or you might label it as a C C position so that's going to be one and then we're going to go to position two and so I'm going to say this is going to be position two and I'll put this like right there I'm going to make that like purple I think is the next color I have available to me we're running low on colors so I'm going to call that position number five and that's all the positions that we have if that was a C this is going to be an A if we look at our caged system and you can see that here if you're holding this down and holding these down it's not an A chord but it's an A type of shape we'll talk about that more later and we can see of course that this one also repeats back here because if that's position four then this has to be position five right here as well let's bring this down a bit and so I'll copy this over here so you can see what's happening here we're going to start in the middle and I'm going to call that position one even though it's in the middle of the guitar because that's what often happens because that's the first position people often learn but you could name it the G shape position if that feels more right to you and then you've got position two position three position four which you can label with the caged positions if you want just remember don't get these confused which is very difficult to do when you first trying to understand this as though these are the actual note chords that you're playing no these are the shapes of the chord if they were played in open position right so the actual chords going to be different but in any case then it goes up to five and then if I started at this middle position when we start going backwards we go around the loop and so that means that we're going to start from position one here this was position one and then position five is behind it because there's only five positions and then we're going to go back to position four so what we've but we've basically been learning in my terminology would be position four or you can think of it as the C position to anchor it to both the major and minor scale that's around it and then now we're going to be and then you can move it up from there if you so choose now one other kind of weird thing you could see that this whole column right here doesn't have anything any doesn't have like the same overlap position when we actually play the full major scale here then we will be picking up another note so I might just actually pull this one back to here and you can see that this once we add the major scale will be a five fret one right and then this is a four fret position and then basically you have another five fret position so it's going to be kind of alternating between these positions being four and five frets so hopefully I got that correct let's color code this to make this home tab make this blue let's make this purple and I know that might make it more difficult to see but hopefully the color coding will have advantages beyond the fact that it's difficult to see and then let's make this the green and then we're going to make this the blue again and then this is going to be the purple so I won't keep on going up the neck from here let's stop it there let's make this bold because we get to see it start over again now I was going to try to see the overlap like you could try to map out what the overlap looks at looks like down here so for example if I'm looking at the difference to overlap between the blue and the purple is right here just to kind of try to emphasize that overlap so if I put that over down here this is the overlap between positions four and five right and if I look at if I look at like five is the purple and I'm looking at the purple as it overlaps to the red it's going to be the purple and the red overlap like right here right so there's the overlap so you can think of this position as in between the five and the one and then I could say okay and then the one overlaps with the two right here in this yellow space so I'm going to say okay let's pull that down and notice you get this weird thing where it's not really overlapping right here because you're alternating between a five fret and a four fret kind of position so and then I can say okay if it's going from here to here so now we're looking at the yellow as it goes to the yellow overlapping with the green gives me my overlap right here and then if I'm overlapping the green to the blue again we have that skipping of no overlap here because we're going from the the five fret position to the four so hopefully I did that well enough that makes some sense I know it's kind of messy but so that's why we're going to break these shapes down later one at a time but before we do that let's think of it in terms of of the the major scale and the minor scale so I'm still going to map out the minor I'm going to select these one two three five six let's make those green home tab style or no font and make it green not that green I like the dark green here or I think that's easier to see maybe I don't know and then I'm going to select this whole thing and this time let's map out the whole thing in blue first mapping out the major scale and then I'll put the pentatonic on top of it so you can see how it fits within the major scale so I'm first going to make everything blue so I'm going to hit the drop down and make it blue everything needs to be blue this time this time everything has to be blue this time people why because I said so that's why I'm controlling the color scheme and I don't want anyone messing that up I'm in charge here I've been in charge of the executive color scheme creator I have complete control E and then we're going to say this is going to be F and then this is going to be G I'm going to color format G and then okay and then I'm going to color format A A and then okay oh wait a second that's a different color let's color format A and make it blue has to be blue A A is blue and then B blue 2 okay so there it is the whole thing now let's keep it up this is the major scale let's actually I'm going to copy this whole conditional formatting and go to the home tab up here and copy that and paste it to the one below it as well and so this would be if I had all the notes in place and I can see the same pattern let's go ahead and put the pentatonic on top of it so let's go home tab conditional formatting let's make the green ones which will fit inside of it see let's make that green so now we're going to switch the ones we're putting a layer on top now which is just 5 out of the 7 notes so that's going to be C to D D and then we're going to an E is going to be green and then we're going to a G skipping the F going to the G is going to be green and then we're going to the A which is also going to be green okay so there we have it now you can see the pattern well it's going to be hard to see until we focus in on the pattern but this is the same pattern except that we added the two extra notes the F and the B so let's go ahead and copy this down like if I copy each one of these kind of individually you can see that on the 4 you can see right there boom there's our normal position if it was a pentatonic position but now we're adding these other cells and that's why we extended it back here to pick that one note up in fret 4 that's why we had it longer otherwise if it was pentatonic you could shorten that then we can bring down let's just bring this down this way for us to go okay let's bring this down like this dude and so that's going to be that one if we go back and let's just see if I can copy the rest of these I have this one I'm holding down control holding down control and control C and then I'm going to paste that right here boom so there it is I think everything is lined out let's go ahead and copy this stuff and put that down here as well so there we have it and so again I know that's kind of messy but we'll refer back to it later on because in kind of this middle position let's do the same thing again over here I'm going to hold down control and copy all this stuff again and if we see it just with everything as blue it looks like this meaning this is just the major scale without the pentatonic mapped on top of it hopefully I have everything done well I'm doing this kind of fast but I think everything is mapped out the way it's supposed to be and then let's do it one more time so I'm going to select I'm going to select this major scale this time and I'm going to format paint it home tab clipboard format paint it and put it right here again and then I'm going to copy this whole thing again the blue the blue kind of blends in now doesn't it the blue blends in I can't even see it what were you thinking with your color scheme what were you thinking no one can see the blue okay whatever you know where you could see it okay so then now let's map on top of that like a C a C chord just to see how the cage system works just so you can get an idea we'll talk about the cage system later but in this case it's useful for the naming of the positions so we'll do our normal naming routine so I'm going to select this whole thing and we're going to go home tab style and let's make this equal to the C we're going to make that green boom and then we're going to say this is going to be equal to the E and that's going to be red and then I'm going to say this is equal to the G and that's yellow okay boom so now if I mapped out our our positions here what happened well in this first one we have let's make let's make this one blue because this is the blue C in position four is blue like that so we have there's the C there's the C what are you at the beach there's the C no I'm talking about this you can't even see that with all the other blue okay man you do it over you're messing everyone up so there's our C position okay and then let's make this a little smaller maybe I can so you can see that we're the okay and then if I moved to the next one we have the A position right so then I'm going to say A position let's make this one red it's going to be red and no it's not red it's purple we're not to the red yet it's purple and so there's my A position so now I'm getting that C again so we're layering on the meaning again the meaning is layered because there's overlap between that and then the A would go from here to here so now we have the G let's make this one a little bit larger and then boom see what I mean with the caged position so this is still a C chord but now this is like this is like an A position that's like playing a C what in the world let's just leave it at that and then we move up to the G position over here so now that's going to be a red one so the red see that C right there it's a C but it's got like a G shape man whoa whoa dude okay I'm going to make this one larger so then so now see this is why these three ones here you can think of them as part of the G position or as part of the A position most people think of them as an A G gets cheated but they're kind of either one because it wouldn't necessarily be the A position unless you pick this one up because that's the one that makes it totally A-ish because like if you picked up these over here then it would be like part of the C and then if we went to the E we can say that's going to be yellow E position so now we're going to pick up the C note again up top this is going to be the E major shape which we haven't really looked at because we've only looked at the minor shape when we're looking at the chord constructions from the key of C but from the caged system this would be our standard bar chord boom boom boom boom for a major bar chord but it's still a C even though it's like an E shape that's why you can label this whole shape thing an E shape pentatonic or major scale position now be careful though when you try to label the entire the entire major shape as an E shape because I could move this E shape up to other positions and it'll still fit even though I have a different shape but if it was the pentatonic position it would be unique so it's still a little there's no perfect way to kind of do any case we'll talk more about that later let's finish it up here we're going to the D the D is here and let's make this green green and then it's going to be in here so we have to put layers upon layers if you really want to get down to the truth there's layers upon layers of lies that you have to or half truths if you want to be generous to the liars and then we're going to put that there and then so notice this whole D shape again it's kind of in the middle of that and then the C so if I connect this up to the C again the C shape I can just copy just the blue ones and I want to put that over here no grab it grab it so see how this whole D shape down here is really actually part of the C shape too but people never call it that because it looks classic D like but it's really not like fully D unless you pull that one in with the D shape because these notes are also in the C shape but no one sees it that way so you can just call it a D shape even if you don't pull in that note but whatever that's how it all blends together so we'll start dive it like I say we'll kind of dissect this later and we're just going to focus in on this position first in the middle of the fretboard and then we'll try to expand it out my point here being that all this stuff kind of mushes together and so what you want to do is try to separate it at first and then blend it together so that you have everything in its own little box but then you realize that like when it really comes down to it there are no boxes