Mandolin Techniques: Harmonized Scale

After a few mandolin song / tune breakdowns, I thought it was time to get back to some mandolin techniques. Today’s mandolin technique breakdown is more of theory review on the harmonized scale. If you’ve heard someone explain the chords of a song / tune by saying “it’s a 1 4 5 in A” or “it’s a 6 2 5 1 in G”, then you know what a harmonized scale is – even if you don’t fully understand it! Feel free to post your questions in the comments section below.

What is a Harmonized Scale?

The easiest explanation of harmonized scales is that they are series of chords created by stacking 2 thirds on each degree of a scale. For example, the C Chord is C E G – C to E is a 3rd, and E to G is a 3rd – hence the phrase “stacking thirds”. When you repeat that process for an entire scale, you get 7 chords made up of notes from that scale. These 7 harmonized chords fit together in a given key naturally, which is why they form the foundation of so many songs across various genres.

While just about any scale can be harmonized, the most common scale to harmonize is the major scale. Harmonizing the major scale is where we get the basic Nashville Numbering patterns of “1 4 5” and “6 2 5 1” etc from. Below are the basic patterns to harmonize a scale:

Basics of Scales

Before we get in to harmonized scales, first we need to touch on scales as a whole. Scales are a series of ordered notes/pitches that sound good together. While there are a lot of different types of scales, the most common, especially in bluegrass and folk music, are 5 tone scales called pentatonic scales or 7 tone scales called diatonic scales like major scales. For our purposes here, we’re focusing on the 7 tone diatonic scale – more specifically the major and natural minor scales.

You can create any scale by knowing the “scale formula”. Below are those formulas for Major and Minor scales.

• Major: Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step
• Natural Minor: Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step

If you’re more a visual learner, the below may be a bit more helpful

What’s a Whole Step and Half Step?

Good question! The easiest explanation is a Whole Step is 2 frets on your mandolin and a Half Step is 1 fret on your mandolin. Honestly, you don’t need to know much more than that for our purposes here – but in case you’re dying to know more, below are a few graphics that should help.

Using a piano is probably the easiest visual for this. The below shows the Whole vs Half Step for an octave of the C Major Scale.

Now, since we’re mandolin players, let’s look at this on the mandolin fretboard too! Below is the C Major scale (which is C D E F G A B C) highlighting the Whole vs Half steps in the scale

You can essentially sum up the above with the below:

• Major Scale, you’ll have half steps between the 3rd & 4th degrees and between the 7th & 1st degrees. Everything else is a whole step.
• Minor scales are similar, but the half steps are between the 2nd & 3rd degrees and the 5th & 6th degrees.

Harmonized Scale and Chord Generator

Use the below generator to see the harmonized chord set for any key.

Key: C G D A E B F C# G# D# A# E# B# F# Cb Gb Db Ab Eb Bb Fb Scale Type: Major Minor Mixolydian Harmonic Minor Melodic Minor

Chord Root	Chord Type	Nashville Number	Chord Tones

Downloadable Harmonized Scale Charts

The below are graphics showing harmonized chords for all keys in a particular scale set..

• Harmonized Chords for Major Scales
• Harmonized Chords for Minor Scales

Here’s a few different practices for the harmonized scales as well

• C Major scale harmonized chords (double stops, 3 note, and 4 note)

I’d suggest creating some flash cards to memorize these progressions as well. On one side, the key. On the other, the harmonized scale.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me here or comment below. Also, if you enjoy the content I’m posting please consider a donation to help keep the site running.

---