5-3 · In-Position Major Scale Modes: Hidden in Plain Sight

If you've spent time with a guitar method book, you've seen the five in-position fingering patterns for the major scale, printed as six-string blocks of dots.

Any of the five can play any of the seven modes — all that changes is which note you treat as the tonal center. Follow that road literally, and you end up with thirty-five combinations to keep track of. Fortunately, there's a much better way.

Every one of those five patterns has three of the in-position pentatonic forms from Module 3 sitting inside it, one for each pair of modes from the last lesson. It isn't easy to see a pentatonic inside a block of dots, but it's very easy to start with the pentatonic and build the scale out around it. That's the whole method:

1. Pick a root. That's your tonal center.
2. Build the pentatonic framework around it, alternating rectangles and stacks exactly as in 3-3.
3. Notice the triad. The notes of a major or minor triad are sitting inside the pentatonic. Those chord tones are the harmonic anchor of whatever mode you play.
4. Add the two color notes for the mode you want.

This construction gives you a natural hierarchy of notes. At the foundation is the tonal center. Around it is the base triad. Around that, the rest of the pentatonic fills out the basic sound. And on the outside are the two color notes, which tweak the sound and tell you which mode you're in.

Once the pentatonic skeleton is in place, changing modes costs almost nothing: just move the color notes.

Work through the six modes this way in one spot, and you will have recreated all five of the traditional book patterns (two of the six turn out to share a fingering, offset by one fret). The difference is that you built each one from the tonal center outward, so you know where everything is inside it. You don't memorize where the tonal center sits inside a monolithic blob — you start with the tonal center, and the "blob" grows out from there.

For Locrian, build the Phrygian fingering and lower the 5, as in the last lesson. The resulting rectangle is awkward: its lowest note, the ♭5, is the same pitch as the note sitting one fret above the top of the stack. If you skip the rectangle's lowest note and play the note above the stack instead, you're back to one of the traditional in-position fingerings. In honesty, you'll rarely need Locrian at all — I explain this more for completeness than anything else.

Exercise 5-2: Pick a tonal center anywhere on the fretboard. Choose a mode and set up the matching drone — a major triad for Lydian, Ionian, or Mixolydian; a minor triad for Dorian, Aeolian, or Phrygian; a diminished triad for Locrian. Build a rectangle or stack around the root, add the two color notes, and play through the shape in groups of three, ascending and descending, flowing into the neighboring rectangles and stacks above and below. Once it feels comfortable, change one variable (the tonal center, the mode, or the position) and do it again. Keep the hierarchy in mind as you play, and keep listening.

You don't have to work through every mode in every position. Do this enough times that the process becomes second nature, and the five book patterns will take care of themselves.