 Guitar and Excel, C major, A minor, scale fret number 7, fingering. Get ready and some coffee because it's time to pick a side, people. And remember, if you pick the wrong side, it's just gonna sound like you're scratching wood with plastic, which isn't generally a crowd-pleaser. Nails on chalkboard annoying! Although it's usually less loud than when you pick the right side of the guitar, which may please some. You always pick the wrong side. But in any case, that's why we need the coffee. So you can confidently take that guitar out of the pile of dirty laundry it's sitting in, turn it the proper way around, and pick the proper side. There's only one way to find out. You have chosen wisely. 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 did so in prior presentations. So if you want to build this from a blank worksheet, you could 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, the scales, the chords that we're focused in on. If you do have access to this workbook though, there's a bunch of tabs on down below, including the O.G. Orange tab, representing the original worksheet we put together in a prior section. It now acting as the starting point, having our entire fretboard mapped out, giving us our entire musical alphabet in letter format, number format, and combining letter and number format, providing an adjustable key that can be changed with this green cell, which will adjust the key of the worksheets on the right hand side, providing us the notes in that key, the chord constructions from the notes in that key, the interval information, and more. We've been focusing in on the C major scale. We started out by looking at the chord constructions in open position. That's what all the yellow are going to be over here in our tabs. So we mapped out in open position defined as frets one through three, starting with the C major chord. Then we went to the F, the G, the D, the E, the A, and the B diminished all of the chords constructed from the major scale. Then we jumped to the middle of the guitar, looking at fret number five in particular now from the standpoint or angle of scales, as opposed to the chord constructions. Then we thought about how we can connect what we did in open position to the information in the middle of the guitar from a scale construction going through the chords again, the C, the F, the G, the D, the E, the A. Now we're going to the next position up in our pentatonic shapes going up the neck. So last time we looked at the pentatonic shape up here, which is only five out of the seven notes, and now we're going to add the extra two notes and think about how we can finger the next shape up. So I'm going to scroll down, and here's going to be the worksheet that we'll be using here. So now we have the same pentatonic shapes in green, but we've added the notes in blue now to represent the added two notes to the major scale. So I'm going to go ahead and hide from AF to to AJ, right-click and hide those. So now we see this. So here's the major and here's going to be the minor. I'm not looking at any particular scale, so let's see if I can go ahead and undo this, and I'm going to go ahead and say let's format, paint this to here. So here we have it, let's go ahead and hide. I'm also going to hide from here to here, right-click and hide those items. So just to recap, in open position, when we've looked at our open position over here, we learned this from basically a construction of the chords. And if you put all the chords together, meaning we made all of these chord constructions, if you put them all together, you'll basically come up with this scale construction in open position. That's the funnest way to learn it really, generally, and the most useful way to learn it oftentimes. Then we moved up to the middle of the guitar, and we talked about this position both in terms of the pentatonic shape and then adding the blue notes for the major shape. Notice it's five frets long here once you add, you know, this blue note for the major shape as opposed to four frets long, but there's only three or four frets for any one shape that we're playing. And then we're moving to what I would say starts on the seventh fret here, which you can call it now, we can call it position number two, or we can call it the E shape type of position. And this is going to be connected, of course, to position number one. We noted the overlap, so we have a substantial amount of overlap between position one and position two. And I just want to kind of emphasize a little bit more on that overlap, because note up top when we just look at the pentatonic, it might be easier to see just on the pentatonic up top, then the connecting points here are going to be just that one note, right? So we have the one note that's going to be connecting the two, even though it's spanning two frets. And you can see that down here. So if I connect these two shapes, and I just look at the pentatonic in green, this is the start of the shape, what I would call shape one, the G, this is the end of it. And then the next shape is starting on the next green note. However, there's an overlap of the two frets here. When we go to the major shape, then we could have a more substantial overlap, as you can see here on this first two notes. So now we're going from the first shape went from here, boom, boom, and the second shape is actually you can think of it starting on fret number seven, depending on what you're basically playing. And we'll talk about that in a second. And then you can go through it this way. So we have that substantial overlap. Now when you think of that overlap, then you've got to think about well how am I going to be fingering when I'm going from say this position up to this position. And that gets into what's the best optimal finger position when I'm here, as well as what am I actually playing. So when we go into these scales, it's going to be useful to think about what it is that we're going to be playing so that we can target those particular notes and when we're practicing the scale possibly start and end on those notes. When we saw the pentatonic shape, which was the green the green shape here, the five out of the seven notes, we noted that all of those notes will fit in the major scale and it's relative minor scale, which is going to be the minor or a minor in this case. When we talked about like a scale that was created from the D or the two, the Dorian for example, not all of the notes are going to fit into the pentatonic. However, if we move to the major now, which we're looking at now, they will all fit because all of these chords that we constructed, we constructed from the C major scale. So everything's going to fit in it. So there's kind of two ways you can look at. A lot of people really like playing in the pentatonic because it's a very flexible type of scale, less likely that you're going to kind of make errors within the scale and clash with something else that's going on. So some people tend to think of the pentatonic shape and then they add the notes that they might need to accent when they're moving to something else like the C chord to the D chord where that F might be something that you add on to the pentatonic. Other people, I tend to see it more like I'm playing in the whole major shape and then I subtract the two notes, you know, in my mind typically when I'm trying to think about if I'm playing in a pentatonic shape versus the major shape. So those are just a couple kind of ways that you might visualize it in your mind. A quick note on the number on the naming system here. When we say this is position one you'll recall it with position one because it looks like a or I call it position one as kind of a generic name but one that's used quite often because people usually use this as the main pentatonic shape that comes to people's mind when they think of pentatonic scales and then you can just add the two notes on to it and you could say this is the major scale relative to that pentatonic scale. The reason people use the G they might call it a G shape is because the G shape fits inside of it here. So remember that if you use the G shape it's not actually a G chord. We're saying this is a C chord now but it fits inside a G shape. So if I was to play the G in open position it would look like this. Here's the shape in open position and if I bring that on out to here then we have that's what this shape is. So you can kind of tag it what you're actually playing by the shape. The shape however will only be unique to the chord and the pentatonic the green and then you have to add the two notes on top of it. That shape will also fit into other major scale shapes because of the added two notes the seven notes. You just got to be a little bit careful when you when we name it that way if we go up to the two I'm going to call this two generically because it's going from this shape to the two shape which I'm just going to memorize basically as this shape but you can also tie it to an E an E major type of shape. So an E major shape is going to be similar to the E minor but we we shift the fifth so if I look at the E minor we have this here but the major would have this one checked off there so it would look then you could see that shape within here because we're going to say that we have then let me use these let me see if I can use the let's use the red ones we're going to have the C so it's going it's in the key of C right but here's the E shape so it'd be boom boom boom here and then this is the difference between the major and the minor we'd be saying that here and then here and then here so that's our standard major bar shape if I'm picking up the the the chord or the note from that top string so we can we'll deconstruct that bar shape a little bit more later but just in terms of the pentatonic shape that might be one way that you can kind of target the shape that that you're what we're looking into so I'm going to try to hide I'm going to bring this one back a little bit so that I can't see the overlap but I'd like to focus just on this shape itself which is going to be in the yellow and then possibly outline the bit over here that is in shape one that we can then use to kind of connect to it so as we're learning this shape if you learned the pentatonic shape then you can put this on top of it now when we learn that the pentatonic shape up here this is our this was our first shape in position one and then we have the pentatonic shape or if I had a pentatonic shape it would just be this and on the first string the the pointer to the pinky and then oftentimes people I tend to do this will start playing up here connecting this A to the C and then I'm moving my my pointer finger up here which isn't really the the the most economical way to play it sometimes because remember that what you'd like to do possibly on this position is use this fingering so that you're playing this with your middle finger because that puts you in proper position all the way down trying to get comfortable on how I'm going to play it but it's hard to get comfortable playing this and doing the excel at the same time but you got you have this here and then you can move down down here so that's why it's useful sometimes to play with with this finger here but again you lose kind of the ability to do hammer-ons and stuff like that so you have to think about what's going to be the best kind of finger in position when you're thinking about the pentatonic and then versus the major the major scale obviously when you look at the major scale it looks like this in position or on the first top string the lowest string I can do that and then it goes to here so you have that substantial overlap between these two notes so the first thing people will probably do is just want to learn the shape up top to bottom and that's a good exercise a lot of people will say that's not like that's not musical or a way to do it but that's what normal people will do however I think a lot of people have a good point that that you should it would be better to do that if you think about what at least the note that you're in and not just the shape without without thinking about the notes that you the the scale that you're playing in so remember we can play now any of these modes that we want to because because we have all seven notes so we can start from any note and think of ourselves in any of those modes if i'm practicing scales how can i do that well you can start and end on the note basically that you're that you're practicing so if i'm playing this in the key of C then i probably want to be starting on the C here rather than the B right if you start on the B and you start doing that it's going to start sounding like you're in the key a key related to the relative B mode right and what you want to be doing is is getting your ear tuned so that you know what your what mode you're in if that's what you want to do that would be fine but we're going to try to tune it in our ears so we're in the C so you might start on the C here if that's going to be our first practice we could start on the C so here's the C and you know on the relative minor it would be here but we're on the C and then you might go up and target the next C that's going to happen right which is right there so you could when you're just kind of practicing the scale you might start there you might go back and then to here and then go up from here see how it kind of ends and it leads in that B is what we were missing or one of the two notes that were missing before you could hear it's that leading note that gets us back up to the C here and so if that basically just plays through the scale right there I can target the next note I'm just going to play through the scale again so now we're here we're going to go from here and I might double or play that again right so I might like put a pause in my finger and to say okay that's where I ended at I might not say every note that I'm playing as I go but I might just want to start and end and say okay that's where I ended so I ended the scale and then go from here so now we went up the scale here and you can hear once again that leading note from the B to the C so notice I kind of ended and you can hear with your ear it sounds good to end it on that C even though there's another D up here so you could go back up to the D and then back down but you probably want to if you're tuning your your mind to be playing the scale you probably want to go back down to that C and then if we go back up the other way then of course we can I would start on this C so instead of starting on the D and going back down unless you want to like have your mind fixed that you're in the related D or Dorian you know mode you probably want to start on the C and then maybe go up and then maybe go down and then I'm going boom I was going to try to do this one at a time so I could follow this down but that see that makes it go right back down to that C again and then from the C I'm looking to see it's going to go down to this C and so now we're going so notice I'm kind of stopping on this C I could go back to the B and then back to the C that would be fine but you probably want to start an end on the C most people don't really do that and you're still learning the shape when you first learn it you might still be learning the shape but you'll be able to tie it into what you're doing a lot more easily if you target you know a note within it now you could also of course count the notes up if you want if you can count them you know in your mind as you're playing them we're going to have the seven notes and then it's going to go back up to the to the octave right so that's a useful exercise to do you can see you know you can say this is the one let me try to one two I'll mess up one two three three four five six seven and then eight so now I'm ending on the eight right here I think it's useful to call it eight right and then start it again and go through your go through your scales and you're actually labeling or numbering you know the interval names out within the scale so then of course you can do the same thing for the relative minor and any of the modes now when this like when I started playing I usually obviously like most people started playing in this scale and or and and I and the a was what I was playing in most of time because that's the thing that that starts the scale so it was actually it's even though it's all the same notes it's actually a little bit difficult to say now I'm going to try to play this in the key of C right because the seat now you're starting over here and you're targeting those seeds whereas if you if you always start here you're probably going to tune your ear your ears just naturally going to go to where the a's are yeah well that sounds good I'm going to play it here why is it sound good there because you keep on playing everything in a minor so you so if you're up here then it's kind of the opposite thing where this shape in particular is going to is going to start if you start the shape right here you're starting on something that isn't in the major or relative minor but it leads itself to start here so if you start this shape right here then you're you're in more of a C major right you're going to be playing something in basically the C major it's going to sound like a C major if you start and end the scale on the C major so if you're noodling around you might want to start there now a lot of times if you're using the proper finger and you might put your finger here and then here because as a as a kind of a starting point because now you you might want to like move around this shape so so now that we've learned the scale up up and down the next thing you might want to do is try to say i'm going to play a little piece of this ship i'm going to play this top part maybe these top two strings if i do that then the question is how am i going to do that well i need to target a note and it's easy to target the C is probably where i want to start considering it's a C major scale there is the C how should i finger the C well traditionally you might do it this way this is how i would normally start doing it because now you've got the one and the five right there and i've got this string underneath it as well right but i'm missing the third so the third is going to be down here which is a nice thing to add right there so you also might start fingering it like this as kind of like your starting point it's a pretty comfortable position and then your fingers are actually in the proper position to move up the scale here so i can so now i'm just going you know these two notes and then going do do do do do and then back down to the C so the C is my base note that i'm kind of trying to return to as i so now i just did the same kind of thing i went do do do do do and then i went from here do do and then i'm ending it back on that C so it sounds pretty squarely in the C so it's kind of nice to have that minor because that's the distinguishing factor between the C major and C minor but you could do it this way as well that's your standard power chord but it's not going to sound like it's like it's uh so now you're not in proper fingering position right because you should be having these two fingers and now you've got these two fingers but that's a traditional or or a nice fingering position to do like hammer-ons and stuff right so you could go back to your prior position too so we've learned these strings back here so you can always and that gives you that leading A or that leading note from A B C so then you can practice each of these each of these positions you might want to then go down here and say okay now i'm going to practice basically you know with these two strings if i'm looking at these two strings uh then or well let's where did i go i went to these two strings then my C is going to be out here so i can say okay there's my C there's a C there's a C so you might start there so it's a little bit it's a little bit more difficult to start there because now you're starting on this side right which might be traditionally your pinky i probably i would do more sliding stuff and kind of cheat on that right because proper fingering here would be that i should start that with my pinky but i would tend to start it with this finger because my pinky's weak and i want to try to bend it and stuff like that you could do double stops over here so then you can practice that you can pull in the the prior my shape over here so i can i know my C right here if i pulled into this shape if i extend this back to here now i have a C right there right and so i can kind of connect those two together is another little practice that we can do we'll talk more about that later when we talk about targeting notes and say how can we come up with the lines that are going to come up from here all the way up but then of course you can target each of each of these positions down here if i was looking at the shape down here now again you have your C right there so you might be so you could target that and then if you if you go back up now on the first shape you're probably once again looking at yourself in a minor over here because you're looking you're targeting this note which if i move up to the second shape then that's a little bit more difficult to do because if i look on that first strings i don't get to an A till i get down here right so if i'm over here if i'm on this side i'm like okay the the A is right here so if i'm trying to play in the key of A minor on these lower strings you might pull that one in and then you get down to this A down here so i'm just trying to add that A in or you can basically pick up your A down here if you're playing in this register now your A that was over here in this shape right was there's an A there's an A here's one down here so now you've got your classic like power chord shape which is A to an E and you can practice playing this little middle section in the key of A back to the old position so you can play so you can noodle around there and so it's useful to learn this in pieces playing it up and down but trying to do it some way that's musical and again you kind of want to target the notes to do that now we can do that with any other any other mode as well now that we have all of the seven the seven notes it's going to be even easier than what we did with the pentatonic because again if i was trying to play in the mode of the D it's the same thing as with an A right and all the same notes if i was talking about D Dorian are in the the C major scale so if i wanted to play in you know in in a mode of a D i can say okay there's my there's my starting note so if i'm looking at this shape i might cheat again i'm kind of doing my finger anything up here so there's my D and so now i'm just kind of noodling around but i'm starting and ending my lines on the D if i want to tie that into my priors shape here's my D down here there's my D in the prior shape and i can start to say okay now try to come up with my lines to go from this shape to this shape we'll talk more about that later but that's just how one way we can kind of practice again the same scales but now thinking of ourselves in different modes so we're not like stuck to saying i'm in one mode and you're certainly not stuck to saying i have to start playing this like that and like just like that without having any context that you're starting on a B right you don't even know what you're what you're really playing here it's going to be difficult when you learn like that just to tie that into what you learned over here because if you do this scale and you learn like that you're playing something in an A minor and then if you just convert it to this scale you're playing something in in like a locum mode right which would be which is not what you really want to do so so usually when when i'm thinking about this scale because this is rc that's usually what i this is the scale that lends itself to me to be more of the major kind of scale that you might noodle around more when you're playing in the major i tend to play this more when i'm playing in the minor which is most of more of the time because that's what i started basically learning but you can again you can target each of each of these notes and play basically you know the different modes within them the different modes within them now in future presentations i'll go we'll go through the intervals again so we can kind of list out that interval exercise is always a good thing to do now that we have all the notes all seven notes in there and then we'll start to think about how can we connect these things together how can we connect the last shape that we had where we can play the scale targeting a particular note most often like an A minor probably in the shape or C and then tie then those lines into this note right and then how can we come up with lines that are going to go from our open position that we learned in the format of chords so that we can we can navigate the fretboard find some pathways to get up to get up here and so that we can navigate back and forward on the fretboard you got you got to build these are all like the little towns at this point right they're all separated it seems like you got to get some some some freeways in there some some roads so some the silk the silk road trail so that people start talking to each other and stuff so we'll talk more about that in future presentations