Beginning Note Patterns Review

So far we've covered many of the most commonly used scale and chord patterns. There are many more patterns to discuss, but most new chords and scales will be slight variations of these. That means, the better you know these ones, the easier the others will be to learn.

Ascending Intervals

Can you name and play all of the ascending intervals? Remember, minor 2nd, major 2nd, minor 3rd, etc? Intervals are the building blocks of all scales and chords. The better you know them, the easier learning larger patterns will be.

Common Bass Patterns

You should be able to play these essential bass patterns from memory:

Roots
Octaves
Roots and Fifths
Root-5th-Flat 7th
R-5th-6th

Scale and Chord Patterns

Can you name and play all of the scale and chord patterns we've discussed so far from memory? You need to have these down. Moving forward, we will explore these musical patterns in more depth. If you don't have the simple versions down yet, the more complicated ones will overwhelm you.

Here are the chord and scale patterns I want you to have memorized so far:

Major Scale
Major Pentatonic
Mixolydian Scale
Major Triad
Major 7th Chord
Dominant 7th
Natural Minor Scale
Minor Pentatonic Scale
Minor Blues Scale
Minor Triad
Minor 7th Chord
Diminished Triad
Half-Diminished 7th Chord
Diminished 7th Chord

Don't use any cheat sheets or printouts. Exercise your mind. You don't constantly refer to a dictionary to carry on a conversation, do you?

If you don't have these down, upcoming lessons will be much harder for you. Take the time. Be patient with yourself.

The Big Scale and Chord Pattern Review Exercise

Be sure to learn the cumulative scale/chord review exercise for this lesson block. It's a great daily workout. Once you memorize it, one time through takes less than a minute.

It looks terrifying at first. It's not. You play all of these scale and chord patterns from the same root note without stopping. **Say the pattern's name out loud as you play.** This is very important. It greatly helps reinforce your memory. Don't let the changing time signatures scare you. I did that so each pattern evenly fits within one or two bars--it's just constant 8th notes. Countoff is 4 quarter notes.

[Note: I know the online view of the exercise gets cut off at the end. If you print it out, you'll see the complete last line. There are no pattern diagrams. You must use your memory!]