Secquencing Scales

By taking a normal ‘ukulele scale and working up or down through successive notes, you can create patterns and note groupings that make for great finger exercises and melodic ideas.

The idea is simple: take a basic scale – how about C major – and play up a number of notes. Lets try going up a 3rd to start with: C D E (1 2 3) - C to E. Okay, now move the starting point from C up a note to D: D E F – D to F. Then start from the next note up: E F G – E to G. Etc, etc… So you would end up with this:

It still gives the impression of the scale, but now it’s not so boring.

Instead of skipping the second note of each group, add it in. C D E, D E F, E F G, etc… And you have another sequence:

What if you go up 4 notes? C D E F, D E F G, E F G A, etc… 5 notes? What if you skip up to the 4th note? C to F, D to G, E to A, etc… Now try it with the other major scales! And with the minor scales!

What about going down with a major pentatonic scale? Lets try an E major pentatonic descending in 4 note groups starting on the E note, 7th fret, bottom string. E C# B G#, C# B G# F#, B G# F# E, etc… Looking like this:

There are endless possibilities, so take this idea and run with it. If you want some more melodic patterns, check out: http://www.zentao.com/guitar/patterns/. It’s for guitar, but if you can read music it should be easy to figure out. And if you don’t read music, the tab shapes on the bottom 4 strings are the same for guitar as ‘ukulele.