5 Guitar Scales That’ll Boost Your Guitar Skills

Imagine this: You’ve learned your guitar chords. Your technique is improving. You’re invited to a jam session to play with a few friends. They start playing in G and ask you to improvise a solo. You feel you should have learned a few guitar scales by now, but you didn’t know where to start or how to use them. The intro of the song is whizzing by, and you start to wonder, “Is it hot in here?!” It’s your turn to play, your time to face the music. And… you wake up in a moment of panic, horror-movie-style.

This is a recurring nightmare for most guitar players. The good news is that this is an easy predicament to solve. We’re going to cover the five most essential beginner guitar scales. Practicing these scales will not only help with your sense of freedom and command of the guitar, but it will improve your technique as well.

When all else fails, every guitar player should have these scales up their sleeve and ready to go. We’ll be moving in order of complexity, so read on as we explore how you can learn guitar scales and impress others with your guitar-playing skills.

What are guitar scales?

Before getting ahead of ourselves, let’s briefly define what guitar scales are exactly and why you should learn them.

A guitar scale is a sequence of notes played in a specific order on the guitar. The notes in a scale are usually ascending or descending in order. Understanding scales is one of the prerequisites for improvising a guitar solo and understanding music theory in general. The distance, or interval, between notes in a scale determines its sound and character. People who are accustomed to Western music are often most familiar with major scales that consist of seven notes with whole and half steps between them. There are different types of guitar scales, including not just major and minor scales but also pentatonic scales and modes, for instance.

Minor pentatonic scale

To get started with our five guitar scales, let’s begin with a simple minor pentatonic scale. This is by far the most versatile scale out there and the one most people learn first. You can think of the minor pentatonic scale as the one that’ll be your safety net for any kind of improvisation you need to perform at any given time.

If you get lost during a song or if you suddenly don’t remember the solo you’ve been practicing, the minor pentatonic scale goes with (almost) everything. This scale will save the day 95% of the time. Think of the minor pentatonic as the Swiss Army knife of guitar scales.

For most scenarios, all you need to know is the key you’re playing in and how to find that note on the 6th string of the guitar. To follow our nightmare example, G is found at the 3rd fret of the 6th string. So place your index finger on fret 3 and start playing the scale from there. Here’s a diagram of the first position of the minor pentatonic scale in the key of G:

G Minor Pentatonic Scale

The red note stands for where G (the root note of this scale) is found. If you need to change keys, you can just translate the entire shape up and down the guitar, lining up the red note on the 6th string with the root of the key you want to play in. If you need it to be A, you just move to the 5th fret of the 6th string and start playing from there.

If you’re familiar with reading guitar tablature, here’s the G minor pentatonic guitar scale in tab form:

Sounds easy, right? It might take some time to get the hang of this guitar scale and how scales work in the first place, so keep on practicing. Once you’ve nailed down the minor pentatonic, it’s time to move on to other more advanced guitar scales and expand your repertoire of guitar-playing skills.

Major pentatonic scale

The brother of the minor pentatonic scale, the major pentatonic scale works much like its minor counterpart in most situations. Here’s a diagram of the G major pentatonic scale:

G Major Pentatonic Scale

This scale has a very different sonic flavor. You’ll notice this as soon as you play it. Always start on the root note and work your way from there when playing up, and finish on that note when coming back down.

Compare this major scale to its minor counterpart. Once you do this, you’ll notice that major scales tend to sound happier than minor scales, which tend to be darker. This is a great way to figure out which scale to use when jamming: If the song sounds dark and rocky, try the minor pentatonic scale. If it sounds bright and happy, try the major pentatonic scale instead.

Try listening to your favorite songs and getting your ear tuned to recognize and identify whether it is played in a minor or major scale.

Blues scale

Another excellent choice for beginners, this scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus an extra note (and its repetitions) called a blues note. It adds a bluesy sound, of course, but really it’s that gritty sound you hear on a lot more than just blues music.

Don’t assume that the blues scale works only in the blues music genre. Do you like Oasis? It’s there in a lot of solos. Metallica? Black Sabbath? You guessed it. Stevie Ray Vaughan? Clapton? John Mayer? A staple of those players. From traditional blues all the way to pop, funk, metal, and jazz, this scale with that extra note can get the job done in style. Here’s a diagram in the key of G with the added note in blue:

G Blues Scale

As we move on to more complex guitar scales, it’s inevitable that they’ll require a bit more control and knowledge. The blues scale is no exception. As great as the blues guitar scale is, you should be careful with it when improvising and playing your solos. The added blues note is a passing note — something to play occasionally, but not too long or too often.

When improvising, you’ll want to play mostly the regular minor pentatonic scale and save that extra note for when you need more flavor. Be sure not to linger too much or end your phrases there.

Major scale

The mother of all the other scales in music theory, this one is the logical next step in our journey toward mastering different guitar scales. This scale consists of seven notes and can be a bit more complicated in its uses. The major guitar scale isn’t quite as versatile as the minor and major pentatonic.

Why? Because the major scale adds two notes to the major pentatonic scale, and those notes can sound tense. This makes them harder to use. Here’s the major scale in the key of G. Notice the differences (marked in blue):

G Major Scale

As you can tell, the shape of the scale is mostly the same except for the two notes and the repetitions of those two notes. Those are a bit tricky to use and don’t always land well in solos, which is why the major pentatonic is always a safer bet.

Having said that, those notes do add character to the scale, and the risky notes always tend to be a bit more interesting for the listener. Making the song a bit unpredictable will be more exciting than always going the usual route. Playing those notes and landing them in a rewarding way demands control of the guitar.

For now, just be mindful of the risky notes when using the major scale. Try them out, and know that if at any time something sounds “wrong,” all you have to do is react and move to the closest note that is common to both the major scale and the major pentatonic scale.

With this in mind, don’t forget to experiment and try new things and guitar scales. Once you feel comfortable playing the major scale, there’s always more to learn and practice, so keep reading.

Minor guitar scale

This scale, like its major counterpart, is the base for all other minor scales. As with the earlier example, you can think of this one as the minor pentatonic with two added notes.

The same warning applies as before: Those two notes aren’t always safe bets, but they are worth the risk and time it takes to master them. So practice the minor scale to make your playing even more exciting (and impressive) for yourself and your fellow band members. Here’s a diagram of the scale in the key of G:

G Minor Scale

As before, notice the root note in red and the differences with the minor pentatonic in blue.

How to practice guitar scales?

Practice different guitar scales — slowly, up and down, in different keys — and always start and end on the root note. Once you memorize them, get a backing track and start playing on top of it with each scale. If you find a backing track in C minor, try playing over it with the C minor pentatonic, the C blues scale, or the C minor scale. Likewise, if you find a backing track in G major that you enjoy, try playing over it with the G major pentatonic or the G major scale.

Have fun with it, and don’t disregard the practice of improvisation, even if it’s just five minutes a day. A typical guitar solo is 30 to 40 seconds, so five minutes of practice are worth seven to 10 guitar solos!

Whatever you do, don’t be afraid of experimentation and making mistakes. Although learning scales may take some time and effort, you’ll find that exploring the world of guitar scales is extremely rewarding.

How to learn guitar scales in a nutshell

These scales are only the beginning of the journey of improvisation. Scale shapes can be difficult to memorize at first, and using scales in a real-world scenario can be overwhelming. Stick with it and learn them in the order presented here to maximize your effort and understand the relationship between the shapes.

The excitement that comes from being able to navigate the guitar fretboard with freedom and confidence can only come from the focused practice of these and more advanced scales. Always be on the lookout for similarities and differences from the scales you already know, building one on top of the other.

Understanding different guitar scales will also help you in songwriting. Start by choosing a scale that fits the overall tone of the song you’re writing. This can be a major scale for an upbeat pop song or a minor scale for a moody metal track. Use this scale for writing the different parts of the song. You can use scales to create chord progressions as well. These are a series of chords that form the harmonic structure for the song you’re writing. Remember that scales are just one part of the songwriting process. Consider also the rhythm and lyrics of the song and how the guitar parts add up in relation to other instruments and vocals.

Now that you have all you need to know about the most essential of guitar scales, get practicing, and don’t forget to have fun!