Now it’s time to have some fun practicing those scales. Fun you say? Scale practice may seem daunting an unnecessary to the novice player, but practicing scales is a great way to develop not only better intonation and dexterity but can also be used to generate ideas for melodies, hooks, basslines or lead parts.
Below is the C Major scale as tab. You can literally play the entire scale on the C string by simply following the formula of: TONE–TONE–SEMITONE-TONE–TONE–TONE–SEMITONE
The same notes can be played across the strings, which is more efficient to play to gain speed.
The scale in this position is in fact a moveable scale. If you were to shift every note up one semitone, you would get a C# major scale. 2 semitones would give you a D Major scale and so on. Use your Key Signature Chart to find out what noes you are playing for each scale.
Watch the video tutorial below to see how the C major scale is played, what fingering to use for ease of playing.
Now see how to turn it into a moveable scale so that you can play all major scales on your ukulele.
SCALE EXERCISE: To make it a bit more fun, try playing this scale exercise and play along to the audio at 60BPM, ensuring you hit all notes perfectly before attempting to speed up:
MAJOR SCALE CHALLENGE:
Now it is time to put those major scale notes into action. Click the button below to download the PDF tablature for Amazing Grace and play along with the video, which is recorded at 70BPM, to help you see the correct finger positions for each note.
Now it is time to put those major scale notes into action. Click the button below to download the PDF tablature for Amazing Grace and play along with the video, which is recorded at 70BPM, to help you see the correct finger positions for each note.