Scales Pt II

It's a way of describing hand position. One thing everybody agrees on - whatever the name of the position, that's the fret where the index finger plays. Confusion comes in where the index finger gets notes on MORE than one fret (by stretching back). If you play 5th fret notes with your index finger, but you reach back for the 4th fret B natural, what position are you in?

I say you're in fifth. Some folks say you're in fourth. Either way the notes are the same.

Other instruments get positions too, with different rules. On a violin, it's how many letter names above the open string your index finger is fretting - if the index hits A or Ab on the G string, that's first position; if it's playing B or Bb, that's second position.

Note,

Thanks now that I read your reply I think I may have asked the wrong question. I guess position is pretty starightforward except for the example you wrote.

I guess it wasn't the postion thing but more of the naming of the box patterns. In the other post regarding scales deano listed the pattern he is using. If I'm correct, that is one pattern of the minor pent which in his example would be in A since it starts on the first fret.

Here is where my confusion comes in. In many books that particular pattern is called pattern 1 or box 1, but I have not found that everyone considers that pattern 1.

What determines which pattern is 1 etc. I realize that at some point the patterns become useless once you know the actual notes but I'm just confused because I haven't seen a consistent way to name these.

Also my teacher gave me patterns for the major scale and they are listed something like 1, 1A, 2 etc. I think these came from a Berklee book.

Yeah, they can be confusing.

For one thing, there are two pentatonic scales - and they're identical notes, but different roots. So 'box 1' could be the minor with a 1st finger, sixth string root... but the major with a sixth string root will be a different fingering (and if you number them sequentially up the neck, major box 5 will = minor box 1). Calling any one pattern 'box 1' is confusing to begin with.

There's no standard for how you number positions at all, so people make up their own. Since the pentatonic has 5 notes, there are 5 different 6th string starting points, which leads to the boxes... two boxes will start on the index, two will start on the middle, and one box requires a shift, so there are a couple ways to approach it.

Individual publishers develop their own methods, and they don't always stay consistent. Heck, I just grabbed a couple old books off my shelf - "Blues Lead Guitar Method" and "Deluxe Anthology of Rock Guitar". Both are copyright 1976, both published by Mel Bay.

The blues book shows four patterns, labeled I-IV in Roman numerals. The rock book shows 5... but to make matters worse, they then show seven different fingerings:

Box 1 minor (same as the blues book box I)
Box 1 major and minor (not really even a scale - it's the minor box 1 with an added major 3rd in the first and second octaves, an added sixth in the second octave... and a major 2nd above the third root!)
Box 2 (same as blues box II)
Optional box 2 (with extra notes similar to - but not identical to - the major/minor box 1!)
Box 3 (which is only a part of the fifth box implied but not shown in the blues book!)
Box 4 (yet another new 'scale' - which includes a four-note chromatic run!)
Box 5 (get this - it is IDENTICAL to box 4, but moved up one fret and identifed as being in the same example key of A... combining all the notes of boxes 4 and 5 actually gives you a chromatic scale!)

Ok, so maybe the editors were distracted one day. I had a few fuzzy moments myself in the 70s. The best guitar book publisher I ever found was Dale Zdenek... their catalog has been sold a couple times, and I think Warner Brothers or somebody else big owns it now. They were the original publishers of Chord Chemistry and a bunch of other gems. So I pull out "Styles for the Studio" by Leon White - also published in '76. He shows seven different pentatonic boxes... a 'group one' which has 3 of the Bay's blues boxes, plus the 'missing' one... and a 'group two' which has the fourth of Bay's, plus two variations on the missing one that overlap the patterns on either side with stretching.

Or maybe it's the time, and I should look at something more current. Bay's son William wrote a method book set called "Mastering the Guitar" (1996). He shows pentatonics... they're not numbered. They're not even identified distinctly from each other. They're all called 'moveable pentatonic scales'.

I guess the real problem is that pentatonic scales aren't used much in classical music - which is where position names come from for guitar - and where they are used (blues & rock mostly) the heritage is not chock full of musicians really literate in naming conventions. So everybody's invented their own labels.

Although confusing I feel better now. That's exactly what I've seen when looking at different books.

I guess it really comes down to getting away from the pattersn and just know the notes, then you won't have to worry about patterns.

I guess it really comes down to getting away from the pattersn and just know the notes, then you won't have to worry about patterns.

That's a great point. My teacher stresses that I learn the notes as I'm playing the patterns, paying particular attention to where the roots are.

I have found it especially helpful to learn the simple formulas for the scales (e.g., w-w-h-w-w-w-h for the major scale). As long as I know where the roots are, I can find all of the other scale notes in any "position" as well as up and down the neck. As a result, I've got about a dozen different scale patterns down, but I have no idea what their number is (except for minor pentatonic pattern one, of course! :) )