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INTRODUCTION

The Universal Scale for Guitar is a map of note positions of the diatonic musical scales (based on the major and natural minor scales) on a guitar fretboard. It includes the ubiquitous major and natural minor scales, and all seven scale modes. This comprises a basis for playing and understanding western contemporary music, scales and chords on guitar.

The purpose of this book is to teach you the Universal Scale for Guitar, and to show you an easy method of learning the Universal Scale across the entire fretboard so that you can see and use it at a glance. Whereas most courses teach you subsets of this scale first (e.g. the pentatonic scales) and eventually allude to this scale in an attempt to keep things simple, it is my belief that this can also cause confusion as there is no understanding as to why those subsets exist or where they come from. But, you have to start somewhere and this book starts from the bigger picture.

With a few basic principles clarified, and a simple 5-step method to memorizing the entire scale across the whole fretboard, one can use this as a basis for understanding standard and popular guitar scales, and chords which fit within these scales. I'll take you through a simple technique I have created for learning and memorizing the Universal Scale for Guitar, and once you know it and can picture and use it at different positions on the fretboard, I'll show you how to apply this scale to make sense of guitar chords, to discover new chords, and to solo and play the “right” notes at any position on the guitar fretboard.

For lead and improvisational guitarists, this training will give you a better understanding of what and where to play by encouraging you to visualize the scale around the notes, solos, licks and chords you are already playing. I like to visualize this Universal Scale for Guitar as an "underlay" pattern, as if it were imprinted on the guitar fretboard, and any notes I play that are on top of this pattern follow the “normal” music rules, and those that are not, bend the rules (any notes not part of the scale are called “accidentals”).

Using this method to visualize an imprint of the Universal Scale on your fretboard, rather than having to recite scales over and over again, means a musician has the freedom to play on, and from any note, anywhere, in an instant on the guitar fretboard. Modern “fast track” training teaches new guitarists to learn scales by heart, which is about as random as starting a little further down the line.