The Five Major Scale Positions
The pentatonic boxes, with the fourth and the seventh put back.
The major scale is the pentatonic with two notes added — the fourth and the seventh — so it falls into the same five windows on the neck, each one a CAGED chord shape with the whole scale around it. Five positions, three notes on most strings, and between them every note of the key everywhere on the guitar.
Here is C major in position 1, frets 5 to 8, around the G-shape C chord. The figure follows the text.
A position is a box with two notes more
Take box 1 of the pentatonic — C major pentatonic in A minor's first box — and add the F and the B. That is position 1 of the C major scale. Every position is made this way, which is why the positions are numbered like the pentatonic boxes here: the windows are the same five; the scale just fills them in.
Position 1
Position 1 is the box around the G-shape chord: in C, frets 5 to 8, with the root on both E strings at the eighth fret and on the G string at the fifth. The root you'll anchor on is the one under your little finger on the low E.
Position 2
Position 2 is the E-shape box: the root under your first finger on the low E string, eighth fret in C, the most-played position after the open one because the barre chord under it is the one everyone knows.
Position 3
Position 3, the D-shape box, frets 10 to 13, root on the D string and the B string.
Position 4
Position 4, the C-shape box: in C it is the open position, the C chord you learned first with the scale around it — and again at the twelfth fret.
Position 5
Position 5, the A-shape box, frets 2 to 5, root on the A string. Then position 1 begins again at the fifth fret.
The modes are these positions with a different root
Play position 1 and call D home instead of C and you are playing D dorian; call G home and it is G mixolydian. The seven modes of C major all live in these same five positions — nothing on the neck changes, only which note your ear returns to. That is the whole of "modes on guitar", and it is why learning the positions well is worth more than learning seven sets of mode shapes.
Hear it
The app's Range Shifting game plays a phrase from the scale inside one window and walks the window up the neck a position at a time, and you play it back. The positions stop being pictures when you can hear which one you're in.
Questions
- How many positions does the major scale have on guitar?
- Five, in the CAGED system — one window around each of the five chord shapes, together covering the neck. (The three-notes-per-string system uses seven; the notes are the same.)
- Are the major scale positions the same as the pentatonic boxes?
- Yes: each position is a pentatonic box with the fourth and seventh degrees added. Learn the boxes first and the positions are two notes away.
- Which major scale position should I learn first?
- Position 2, the E-shape box with the root under your first finger on the low E — it sits over the barre chord everyone already knows — then position 1 just below it.
- How do modes relate to the positions?
- A mode is the major scale with a different note treated as the root, so every mode of C major lives in these same five positions. Nothing moves on the neck; only the note you resolve to.