Every scale everywhere all at once

This YouTube video demonstrates how to use the rectangle and stack visualization method to play every scale and arpeggio most guitar players will ever need across the entire fretboard. I don't intend any hyperbole with that statement. I estimate that these scales account for more than 99% of every note ever played on a guitar.

Does it cover the whole-tone scale or other obscure symmetrical scales that are barely used, even in jazz? No. But...it does cover the 14 scales that are used most frequently, plus three arpeggios, all in just 15 minutes.

With this method, any motivated guitar player could learn to recall all of these scales anywhere on the fretboard with just a few hours of effort.

The 18-page PDF version of the lesson is available above.

Every Scale, Everywhere, All at Once

Most guitar methods teach every arpeggio and scale as a separate, stand-alone entity, each with five to seven distinct fingering patterns that must be memorized to play it across the fretboard. This scale-by-scale, arpeggio-by-arpeggio approach is hopelessly inefficient in three ways. First, it ignores the grid structure of the fretboard, which causes scales and arpeggios to repeat in predictable patterns across the neck. Second, it overlooks the internal structure within each pattern (e.g., the interval of each note relative to the root). Third, it ignores essential relationships between related scales and arpeggios.

By taking advantage of these three types of structure, we can dramatically reduce the amount of memorization required to thoroughly learn scales and arpeggios across the entire fretboard. And, perhaps more important, we can learn these essential patterns in a way that will help us play more musically.

The end result is that by learning a small set of universal patterns and understanding their relationships, it is possible to play any scale or arpeggio anywhere on the fretboard. It all starts with the pentatonic scale.

The pentatonic scale

Pentatonic scales are fundamental to music in every culture, and the major and minor pentatonic scales are probably used more by guitar players than all other scales combined. These two scales are intimately related to the major scale modes and many commonly used arpeggios. Thus, they form the backbone of this approach to learning scales and arpeggios.

On the guitar, the pentatonic scale is most often initially taught with this familiar fretboard pattern:

Inside that familiar pattern are two smaller shapes that are the key to unlocking the entire fretboard. I refer to them as the rectangle and the stack, and in all my diagrams, the rectangle is outlined in red, while the stack is outlined in blue.

The rectangle and stack

The rectangle consists of two three-fret intervals on adjacent strings:

and the stack consists of three two-fret intervals on adjacent strings:

If we had a guitar with more than six strings, and all of the strings were tuned to be five semitones (a perfect 4th) apart, we would be able to see that these two shapes alternate vertically on the fretboard:

On an all-4ths fretboard, a stack above a rectangle is aligned on the nut side, and a stack below a rectangle is aligned on the bridge side. A rectangle above a stack is aligned on the bridge side, and a rectangle below a stack is aligned on the nut side. These relationships are easiest to remember visually rather than memorizing the “rules.”

The “warp”

The guitar fretboard in standard tuning is almost an all-4ths fretboard. The G and B strings are tuned a major 3rd apart, which creates a warp¹ in any fretboard pattern that falls across it. The simple rule to remember is that any part of a fretboard pattern that falls above the warp is shifted one fret toward the bridge.

I illustrate the warp with a dashed red line and a double-headed arrow that indicates the direction of the shift:

If we select six-string portions of the idealized all-4ths pattern and account for the warp, we get the five familiar pentatonic fingering patterns:

There are four things to notice and understand in these diagrams:

1. When the rectangle falls on the B and G strings as it does in the third pattern, it is warped into a parallelogram.
2. The stack can be warped in two distinct ways, as shown in the second and fourth patterns.
3. Rectangles and stacks sometimes “fall off the edge” of the fretboard. In the very first pattern, there’s the top string of a rectangle on the low E string. If the guitar had a seventh string tuned to B, we’d see the entire rectangle.
4. The warp affects the horizontal alignment of rectangles and stacks. Whenever a rectangle neighbors a stack and the warp falls between them, the entire shape on the upper two strings is shifted one fret toward the bridge from where it occurs in the idealized pattern.

Although the diagrams in this lesson are all based on a 6-string guitar in standard tuning, once you understand how the patterns connect, you will know how to play the pentatonic scale on any 4-, 5-, or 6-string bass, or on any 6-, 7-, or 8-string guitar, all without memorizing additional patterns.

Major and minor pentatonic scales

The major and minor pentatonic scales contain different intervals, but they share the exact same shapes. The minor pentatonic scale is spelled R-♭3-4-5-♭7, and the major pentatonic scale is R-2-3-5-6. The most significant difference lies in which position in the rectangle and stack is the root of the scale. This changes the intervals of the other notes in relation to the root.

If we treat the red notes as the roots as shown here, we are playing a minor pentatonic scale:

These are the resulting minor pentatonic fingering patterns:

And if we treat these red notes as the roots, we are playing a major pentatonic scale:

Six-note scales

The minor blues scale

The minor blues scale (R-♭3-4-♭5-5-♭7) is a minor pentatonic scale with an added ♭5 note, called the blue note. We can reach the blue note in either the rectangle or the stack:

However, the blue note on the top string of the stack is the exact same pitch as the blue note by the neighboring rectangle, so in practice, most players ignore the blue note adjacent to the rectangle, which results in these six-string blues scale patterns:

The major blues scale

The major blues scale (R-2-♭3-3-5-6) uses the exact same fingering patterns as the minor blues scale, but here the blue note is the ♭3:

The minor hexatonic scale

The minor hexatonic scale (R-2-♭3-4-5-♭7) is not widely known by that name, but it is widely used, and we can think of it as a minor pentatonic scale with an added second scale degree. By omitting the sixth scale degree, this scale sounds ambiguous and can be used whenever the Dorian or Aeolian mode would be effective. Hexatonic simply means “six notes.”

Arpeggios

An arpeggio is just a chord played one note at a time. In a sense, an arpeggio is also just a scale with a small number of notes. Triads are three-note chords, and triad arpeggios are like three-note scales.

Minor triad arpeggios

A minor triad is spelled R-♭3-5, and there is a minor triad arpeggio hidden inside every minor pentatonic rectangle and stack:

If we alternate these vertically, we get the traditional in-position fingering patterns for minor triad arpeggios:

These are the exact triad arpeggio patterns found in most guitar books.

Major triad arpeggios

Similarly, there is a major triad arpeggio (R-3-5) hidden inside every major pentatonic rectangle and stack:

And here are the resulting arpeggio patterns:

Other arpeggios

We can use this approach to easily visualize arpeggios for a wide range of chords. To do so, we start with either the minor or major pentatonic rectangle and stack as a foundation, and we identify where each of the chord tones falls relative to them.

A dominant seventh chord is made up of a major triad plus a minor 7th interval (R-3-5-♭7), so it makes sense to start with the major pentatonic rectangle and stack. The minor 7th falls inside the rectangle and just outside the stack:

And here are the resulting arpeggio patterns:

The same approach works for a major seventh arpeggio (R-3-5-7):

For a minor seventh arpeggio (R-♭3-5-♭7), we would start with the minor pentatonic rectangle and stack:

Major scale modes

Six of the major scale modes—Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian—are built around pentatonic scales. The modes each have seven notes, so to convert a pentatonic scale into a major scale mode, we need to add two notes.

If we order the modes by how bright they sound, they break into two groups. Lydian is the brightest-sounding mode (R-2-3-#4-5-6-7), followed by Ionian (R-2-3-4-5-6-7), and then Mixolydian (R-2-3-4-5-6-♭7), and these three modes are each built around a major pentatonic scale. The Dorian (R-2-♭3-4-5-6-♭7), Aeolian (R-2-♭3-4-5-♭6-♭7), and Phrygian (R-♭2-♭3-4-5-♭6-♭7) modes continue to become progressively darker-sounding, and each is built around a minor pentatonic scale.

If we take the modes in pairs—e.g., the brightest major and brightest minor mode are the first pair— each pair shares the same fingering pattern. Here are the rectangle and stack for the brightest major and minor modes:

And here are the resulting six-string scale patterns (the only difference between them in practice is which note inside each rectangle and stack is treated as the root):

The next pair of modes is Ionian and Aeolian, or the major and natural minor scales. In these patterns, one of the added notes is shifted down one semitone:

And here are the resulting six-string scale patterns:

The final pair of modes is Mixolydian and Phrygian, and here the other added note is also shifted down one semitone:

And here are the resulting six-string scale patterns:

The seventh mode, Locrian (R-♭2-♭3-4-♭5-♭6-♭7), is not based on a major or minor pentatonic scale (neither of those scales contains a ♭5), so this approach is not immediately applicable. The Locrian mode is rarely used in improvisation and composition, so that is not a significant drawback of this approach.

The harmonic minor (and related) scales

Harmonic minor

The harmonic minor scale (R-2-♭3-4-5-♭6-7) is commonly described as the natural minor scale (Aeolian mode) with a raised seventh. We can accommodate that by adjusting the position of the minor seventh inside the minor pentatonic rectangle and stack. We could call these “minor-major” pentatonic shapes, after the similarly-named minor(major) seventh chord:

Then, to play the harmonic minor scale, we would add in the modal notes in the same positions as for the Aeolian mode:

And these give us the following six-string fingerings:

In some guitar books, the fingering position of the major seventh in the rectangle is moved to the next higher string. This results in some strings having four notes. I find that the patterns shown here, although slightly less efficient for playing fast, are much easier to remember.

Melodic minor

The melodic minor scale (R-2-♭3-4-5-6-7) is often described as the natural minor scale with both the sixth and seventh scale degrees raised one semitone. We can think of this as a harmonic minor scale with a raised sixth, or a Dorian mode with a raised seventh. Either way, the resulting patterns are the same as the harmonic minor patterns, with one of the added notes shifted up one semitone into the Dorian configuration:

And these give us the following six-string fingerings:

Phrygian dominant

The Phrygian dominant scale (R-♭2-3-4-5-♭6-♭7) is the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale,² which we can also think of as the Phrygian mode with a natural third.

We can create a dominant pentatonic scale by raising the third of a minor pentatonic scale:

And then we can add in the “Phrygian” color notes to make the complete scale:

These are the resulting six-string fingerings:

Conclusion

As this lesson has demonstrated, the vast majority of commonly used scales and arpeggios³ can be derived from two simple geometric shapes: the rectangle and stack. By understanding arpeggios and scales through this lens, it is easy to find the notes of any scale under your fingers, no matter where your fingers happen to be on the fretboard. To do so, simply find a root note, visualize a rectangle or stack around it, and fill in the correct notes for the desired scale.

It takes some practice to get accustomed to recalling scales in this way, and in time, you will end up learning the equivalent of the five different six-string scale patterns for each scale. But there are three massive benefits to learning scales this way:

• First, once you understand the framework, learning a new scale becomes incredibly fast, and the knowledge is durable, meaning that you will be able to remember it more easily later on.
• Second, the connections you’ll see between different scales by using this system are priceless. Being able to switch between a pentatonic scale and a major scale mode at will, and being able to see the triads inside the scales, is glorious when you are improvising.
• Third, when guitarists simply memorize six-string patterns, they often have difficulty recalling the patterns if they don’t start on one of the outer E strings. With this approach, you will always be able to find the right notes, right under your fingers.

There’s a ton of information to digest in this lesson, but once you understand the principles and you’ve memorized the small handful of rectangle and stack variations, you’ll never need to consult a scale diagram again. And that’s why the Fret Science motto is:

Understand more. Memorize less.

Reference