Segovia Scales Part 6: The Two-Octave Minor Pattern

A case for Studying Segovia's C# Minor Scale

Now corrected, I overstated the number of transpositions of Segovia’s Bm scale in his overall series of scales because that scale is more transposable on the electric than on the classical guitar. Because the classical guitar has fewer accessible frets, Segovia creates a two-octave pattern, one presented first in C# minor for scales in which a third octave would present pitches too hight to play.

The key is a particularly useful one to study on the guitar because C# (or Db) is one step higher than the open position; the CAGED map of chord shapes unfolds in that order. Though the accidentals can slow one’s reading of the musical notation, it is helpful to see the shifts in Segovia’s C# minor scale in light of that clear pattern of chord shapes.

If you’ve been intrepid enough to read these essays up to now, you’ll know my method for analyzing them: that is, I break them down by octaves with attention to the tetrachords within each octave. I will keep this essay brief and end with a puzzle for you to contemplate based on the approach to these scales I have taken.

Here is the complete pattern. I find the “feel” of the shifts in this pattern the most smooth, second to the first C major pattern.

One can see the chord forms linked by the ascending shifts by examining the 1-start minor tetrachord in the lower octave and the 4-start minor tetrachord in the upper octave.

I have noticed that Segovia seems to consistently “skip” a chord-form domain in his choice of shifting. In this case, he skips the “G-form” shape. Here is an alternative C# minor fragment that uses the scale fingering around the “G-form.” Notice the string 3, 1-start minor tetrachord that begins the scale.

In previous essays, I have examined the melodic minor scale patterns by breaking them down by octave AND deriving ascending/descending versions of the jazz minor and the natural minor. I will leave it to you to explore the Segovia C# minor pattern this way. Since classical music is the genre where one finds the ascending/descending versions of the melodic minor most often employed, it is important to practice the jazz minor and natural minor freely ascending and descending as is frequently done in other styles of music. Here is the way I practice it in the lower octave.

Now I leave you with a puzzle for the upper octave. Play the first three notes of a C# minor scale using each of these fingerings. After each three-note group find the nearest voicing of the C# minor chord given the suggested chord form. Considering all the Segovia ascending and descending scales, he consistently favors the fingering of these scale fragments considering the chord form associated with a given position of finger 1. While not obvious at first, it is clear to me that given the shifts exhibited in his two and three-octave scales, Segovia conceptualized the fretboard in something like the CAGED map so often used today.