Originally Posted by: rtb67When playing ascending or descending scales,is there a formula to tell me where the next note is? I know on a single string its whole step, whole step, half step.....

Yes, it's always to same formulas; depending on if you are playing major or minor (diatonic or pentatonic). The trick with the guitar is that since you can often play the same note in more than one place you can "double back" & create the same series of notes in many different fretboard patterns.

It is as you correctly wrote the knowledge of the notes in the position your playing. I encourage you to go back & look at my lessons in GF2 that explicitly explain this in detail.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=363
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=743

After that, when you are ready, you can look at the next step: finding those patterns all over the fretboard.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=453
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=887

However, before you go through all of that, keep this in mind: it's much better to know just one scale pattern that you can actually use to make music, than 3 or 4 patterns that are just overwhelming things you are trying to memorize but have no practical use for.

So, learn one of those patterns & practice it. Really get it down & use it, or part of it, in a piece of music. Then go forward & learn another one!

Hope this helps. Best of success!