Why I Recommend Learning the Five Pattern Scale System - 477

Limitations of single scale patterns

0:00Welcome, friends, to the Play Guitar Podcast. I'm Liam. I'm here to help you become the guitar player that you've always wanted to be. We're going to be talking about practicing today. This whole month, we have a theme, and that is getting our scale patterns into a system instead of just one here and one there. If you've ever watched a professional guitar player wondered how they always seem to know where they are, how confident they are on the fretboard.

0:35Their hand lands somewhere, and it doesn't matter. They're comfortable there. That's not what happens to the rest of us. We start one place, and then, oh my goodness, I'm not familiar with this place. Let's get out of here as fast as we can and get to some place where we can make some music. These pro players, they move up and down the neck. They change positions, and everything still makes musical sense. It looks effortless. They're not seeing the guitar the same way that I'm seeing it, right? They're seeing things connected. We're seeing individual scale patterns because that's

1:13how we learn it. I mean, if you think about the guitar, of course, we have scales all over the neck of the guitar, but we can't take advantage of them. We've got a span of about four frets that our hand can handle at one time. So these little places of four frets to five fret areas start to overlap each other, and that's where we're going to be seeing the difference, how these things connect to each other. I'm going to show you one of the simplest ways to develop that vision. It's called the five pattern scale system, and once you understand it, you're never going to look at the

1:47guitar neck the same way again. I know I didn't, and I look at it differently than I did when I first started playing. So I've got a blog post I've had for a long time with this, and I'm going to share it. So you notice, hey, most of us know pattern one, and most of us also know the open positions. I'm not talking about the open positions so much today because they come from these patterns. We'll get to that at another time, but one pattern gives you one view of the scale. It's usually two octaves, and learning that is a good thing. That pattern one got me working. It was a big milestone in my

2:23life. It opened the door to a lot of things. I could start to improvise. I've got notes that work over certain chords. I got confidence from this, but eventually everything I played started to sound kind of vanilla. It started to sound the same, not because what I was playing wasn't good. It's because I've run out of room. Think of it this way. If you're going to be sitting inside your house and you want to take a look around a little bit, you've got one window you can look out. You're looking

2:54through that one window every day. You see outside, but you're only seeing one part of the world that's out there. That's exactly what one scale pattern gives you. One view of how to do something, not the entire fretboard. Because of the way that the notes lay on the different strings and the different types of strings we have, different thicknesses, and they all sound a little bit different. We'll get into that in a minute or two. When you go into different scale patterns, you can vary the sound and the feel of most of

3:24what you play. And you notice that your fingers start to make the same decisions. Your brain finds a few things that work in these patterns, and it likes to do them over and over again. Same bends, same licks, same endings. We're not choosing those ideas. They become habits for us. And we need to open up the door here and get some decisions in other places of the guitar. But remember, I'm not against that pattern that you know. Pattern one, I use every day. You will use that forever. The problem is believing that pattern one is the entire fretboard. It's not. It's simply one part of a much, much bigger picture. So if pattern

4:02one only gives us one view, what do the other four give us? Well, these give you freedom. It's like instead of looking out the window, you open the front door and walked outside, right? This is where everything changes. Most players think they're learning. Okay, well, I'm going to learn this pattern. Maybe I'll play that for a while. Then I'll learn this one. If I want to go high, maybe I'll learn. That's not what this is. You're learning one connected map. Problem is we don't have hands big enough to play all of them at the same time. We have to break them into chunks, but we need to

4:32know the entire map so we have freedom to move about the guitar. Imagine you're soloing and your hand slides up the neck. Instead of feeling lost, you immediately know what notes you're playing. You know where the scale is. You don't have to search. And everything you play becomes either a strong note or a weak note of the chord that's playing. There's no guessing. You simply continue playing all the time. This is the freedom that I'm talking about. The freedom to start anywhere once you understand all five patterns. You can land anywhere on the neck. You already know your surroundings. I'm

5:07going to do that for you right now. So let's see. I'm going to pick a place here. I'm going to pick here at the 7th fret. 7th fret to 12th fret is usually considered the most difficult area of the guitar. Let's do a close-up on this. Okay, so I'm going to pick a random key. Let's say the key of G.

Applying the five pattern system

5:23So I'm going to find a G on either my low E string or my A string. I found it at the 10th fret here.

5:36Now I've got my C shape G

5:43over pattern 4. This all comes from the pattern 4 pattern. Let me go over to the to the screen here. There's pattern 4. Now I'm playing mine two frets back in the key of G at the moment. But there it is on the screen. And you can start to see the C shape in that pattern with every other note.

6:11So now I'm in a place where I'm not familiar, but I found a scale pattern very quickly by finding the root note on one of the two low strings. But now what happens if I have to play in the key of C? Maybe I'm outlining a new chord shape in the key of C? Maybe there's a key change in the song? Well here I'm going to try and find a C. Well there it is on the eighth fret on the low string. I'm going to play my major scale that starts on that note. My whole whole half, whole whole half.

6:43That's major. That's a pattern 2. If I go over here, there's the shape right there. And I can start to see

6:53an E shape in this scale pattern. Look what just happened.

7:01I can see that E shape right there. I'm finding things in these scale patterns that I didn't know before. Oh I can really go in and take advantage of strong notes and weak notes over that chord. What if I wanted to go to the pattern 3, play it pentatonic, or 4, or 1, if I'm in G.

7:24Oh we switch scales with C. That's right. Pattern 4. 5. Pattern 1. Pattern 2.

7:43I can go back and forth between these scale patterns because I practice them a lot over time. And the barrier between the scales starts to break away. I can switch on a certain string. In fact, that's a good way to practice them. Practice up to say, let's pick a string. Let's say the G string. We practice up the G string and then use that as your transport string to move up or back into a different pattern. Practicing these things over and over again, once you get them on autopilot

8:15and you can play them in the middle of a song without thinking, you're going to surprise yourself. You're going to be able to do things that you didn't think you were going to be able to do. The patterns become your landmarks, your GPS. They tell you exactly where you are and they give you the freedom to explore. Instead of asking what notes can I play, you can start thinking where do I want to play and come from a place of confidence. Remember in the past few months, I don't want this to be a game of hope. I want you to be confident and know what you're playing and know that it will work over

8:47these chords. So what you're going to be doing is instead of just seeing patterns, you're going to start seeing music. This is the part most guitar players never expect. Eventually you're going to stop seeing the patterns. You might see colors. I think of a lot of these scales and things that we do to these scales as being a painter's palette. And I might have my minor pentatonic, but then I might add a note to that and would be a different color. I have all of these different colors that I can choose my different scales and different things I do with them. And I can go back and forth using them.

9:21If I know my five pattern system anywhere on the fretboard, no matter where my hand is, you can play one melody high on the first string. And then, hey, I might play the same exact melody up a pattern or two. Now those notes, the exact same notes are on lower strings. Let's see if we can do one here. That was a G, E, D, E, G. I'm playing them on the first one is on the high string and the B

9:57string. The next one starts on the B string to the G string. Next one is G string to the D string. And then the D string to the G string, A string. Notice the difference. It starts to sound mellow where it has a different sound to it. Each string, the same note has a different sound. That exact same melody lower on the neck was what? Warmer. It was thicker. You could say it's bluesier. These are the same notes, completely different emotion. Because I know my five pattern system, I can choose which

10:29one I want, not just get the one that I can just play in the one pattern. I'm choosing colors, not just notes. So you start to see relationships also on the fretboard. Once the fretboard connects, you start seeing things. Hey, that's the same scale pattern that I do in pattern one. Now it's up here, but on a different string in pattern three, things start to get related. You start to see intervals. You start to see arpeggios. You recognize your caged chord shapes. I don't know if you've been starting

10:59those yet. If you're in the academy, you sure have. There's nothing wrong with the caged information. The way it's taught, I have a problem with in a lot of places, but the actual shapes, they are used every day. And you're going to understand where they are and also where the pentatonic scales fit inside the major scale. I talked in the video today about chromatic passing tones. So let's

Chromatic passing tones and chord connections

11:21do something. So let's have a C. Let's see here. To a G.

11:33So in my C chord, let's have this all be in the key of C. So this is going to be C pattern two at the eighth fret. Close up here. There we go. This is an E shaped C. And then we're going to go to a G chord, which is a C shape, between the seventh and the tenth fret. So let's take the E for the C chord. See, this is the note we're looking for.

12:06Then when we go to the G chord, we have a D note there. That's our strong note that we're going to choose for the G chord. So the melody might be... Well, I might want to connect those chromatically. Go from E to a D sharp to a D. So...

12:50I can surround my scale patterns. Since I know my patterns, I also know what notes are not in the patterns. And I can use those to connect a little bit at a cool sound of chromatic passing tones. Everything begins to start to live all the things I've learned on this one connected map across

13:20the fretboard. You'll start to think about the entire fretboard. And that's the goal. Not just one shape. How we can play these ideas in no matter where we are. You're not collecting more scales. You're not memorizing anymore. You're learning to see the guitar differently. The five pattern scale system isn't the destination. It's the map. And once you have the map, the entire fretboard begins making sense. Okay, this was a lot of fun. I'm making the case for it. And we have a whole lot that's going on this month with this five pattern system. I

13:54highly encourage you to start practicing all the scale patterns over a backing track, particularly a vamp of that key and start every day to work on them. And that's what we're doing in the dojo this month. If you've ever felt trapped inside one of these patterns, I hope this lesson has shown you that the answer isn't learning dozens of new scales. It's learning to connect the fretboard. This is going to give you a simple way to do that. And once you see the guitar as a connected map, everything else becomes easier. Intervals, arpeggios, cage, pentatonics, chromatics. They're no longer separate.

14:30They're simply different things you can see on the same fretboard. Okay, so that's a five pattern system. If you want to check out the blog post, I have a link for it in the show notes. And if you want to keep going further with that, check out the Blues Elevation Toolkit. I have all of them in all of the keys for all the big four scales, and we talk about how to use them effectively. Okay. All right. Thanks, everybody. Dojo, at this point, the door should be closed. So congratulations on getting in

15:03there to all the new people. And I can't wait to start working with you. And if you're interested in the dojo, there'll be a waiting list on there. And also, but if you purchase one of the toolkits, you will also get invited to go in there, even if the doors aren't open. So I look forward to seeing you all over there and see you next time. Bye-bye.