Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Whats the difference between c and e major scale

Do you mean, what’s the difference between C# MINOR & E major?

If not, for starters, the C MAJOR scale consists of only natural notes. C, D, E, F, G, A, & B...

The E major scale consists of the notes, E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, & D#...

E Major has 4 sharps in its key signature.

C Major has no sharps or flats.

(I was thinking that you might’ve meant C# Minor, since that is the Relative Minor for E major. And can see why someone would be asking what the difference is between those two scales).

If that doesn’t fully answer your question lemme know

Well did you learn the C Major scale on only 1 string? Or did you learn the C major scale shape? If you learned the shape then you can practice playing the major shape up & down until its comfortable.

you can use this shape for ANY major scale.
So if you’re saying you’ve already learn lessons the C major scale (and you’re referring to the scale shape) then that means you already know how to play the E major scale as well.

so if you want to play the E major scale, you just start the C major scale’s shape on an E note instead of on the C

memorizing shapes is much easier when it’s paired with good knowledge of notes on the fretboard and also music theory. So be sure to dive deep into that too.

Also after you learn a scale, improvise melodies with it and play it over backing tracks that are in the same key.

so that youre using it in musical context right way!

for the C major scale you can play over both C major and A minor backing tracks
bc for C major the relative minor is A minor
- remember, the relative minor starts on the 6th note of the major scale

Your question about how you would build any other major scale with a different key, Tomo sorta sheds some light on this during his Triad videos. At first he uses C Major Triad and it’s inversions (Do-Mi-So, So-Do-Mi, & Mi-So-Do) to help teach you different chord inversions (root position, 1st inversion & 2nd inversion) then he switches it to F major and A major, if I remember correctly.
That same concept can be superimposed into scales as a whole.

One great way to remember how to build major scales is that there is a WHOLE STEP between every single note EXCEPT for the 2nd and 3rd notes AND the 7th and 8th notes. So that is how you can build any major scale, I think that answers your question.

But just to dive a little tiny bit deeper.......

Basically, in traditional western music theory we use the 12 notes

A / A# (Bb) / B / C / C# (Db) / D / D# (Eb) / F / F# (Gb) / G / G# (Ab)

so when you play these 12 notes in different combos, you get diff ‘flavors’ and ‘moods’

BUT most music doesn’t use all 12 notes at once...
instead they just pick a specific group of (generally) 5 to 7 of these notes to focus on at a time...

and those combos of the notes that we choose to include OR EXCLUDE are called the key signature

...if you play all the notes that you decided to use in your key signature in order
from bottom to top...
youre playing them in a scale.

Does that make sense?
so lets talk about scales
the 2 most common scales in music theory are Major and Minor (also referred to as Ionian and Aeolian, respectively)

if you exclude all the shapes/flats

and just use

A B C D E F G

if you play this sequence of notes in this order, and start the sequence from A...

you get the A minor scale.

Next, if youre playing the same notes from this A minor scale

A BC D EF G

BUT now you start from C

(so C now becomes the first note)

then you have C D E F G A B

and thats the C major scale

so we’ve got the A minor scale

A BC D EF G

we’ve got the C major scale

C D EF G A BC

all using those same notes, just in a different order

so in other words
if you arrange the natural notes in order starting on A, you get A minor

starting on C
you get C major

when you learning a scale on your instrument

you should immediately start improvising with it, so that can get in your ears.

so you should spend a few minutes paling the A minor and C major scales slowly enough
so that you can recognize the names of the notes as you play them
- thats important -
then try jamming with the A minor scale over an A minor backing track
and a C major scale over the C major backing track

Play your a minor scale and start messing around with different combo of notes within the scale and diff melodies

Everything I typed was indeed accurate. Yes, B is apart of the A Minor scale. B is the 2nd degree in the A minor scale.

Also, I never mentioned the Pentatonic scale. I only talked about the Major and Minor scales.