Scott Paul Johnson - Guitar Lessons in Seattle

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Live Lesson | 14

What Counts as a Scale in my Melody Making Rules?

In this stream, I got to show you a weird test graphic I made. I didn't end up using it for the lesson I made it for, but I still thought it was cool!

The graphic was showing how I think about scales when it comes to writing melodies. If you've seen my Melody Making Course, you know my basic melody writing guidelines:


1. Always start on a chord tone
2. If you skip notes, only skip from a chord tone TO another chord tone
3. If moving through the scale, keep going until you get to another chord tone

The trick with this third rule is that you can use the chromatic scale, the full scale, or the pentatonic scale whenever you feel like it, as long as you follow a couple guidelines I talk about in this video. I also attached a little graph below for a nice visual representation.