A Major Scale on Terz Guitar

Play the A Major scale on Terz Guitar with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Major scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the common family.

1 of Terz Guitar's 5 open strings belongs to A Major: D (the 4th). The G, C, F and A# strings fall outside it, and A is not available open. Open, the strings cover G2 to G4.

It is also known as the Ionian scale.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

Terz Guitar is tuned G–C–F–A#–D–G, with 15 frets to work with. Guitar shapes work unchanged on terz guitar — finger them exactly as charted; every shape sounds a minor third higher than on guitar.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the A Major scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of A to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.