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Guitar Scales

Guitar scales are a fundamental part of playing the guitar. Every guitarist whether they realise it or not uses them. Its good to learn and understand what makes a scale and why. Music theory is not essential but will help your playing. Also practising scales is good for improving your timing, technique and speed.
At first glance they may look complicated but what you are seeing is the scale represented on all the strings. ANY of the notes illustrated make up the scale and can be played in any order but its probably better if you practice them in pitch order ascending then descending. A scale is complete when you reach an octave of the root note of the key that you are playing in. It does not have to be the first octave however and you do not need to play complete scales before descending.

Lets take the Major Pentatonic as an example.
Denotes a Root note ie If you are playing in the key of A then the symol denotes the note A
Denotes a note within the scale.
When you play the 5th fret of the A string your are in effect playing the same note as the open D string. Therefore every note has many positions on the fret board.
To play a Major Pentatonic Scale in the key of A we would start on a root eg 5th fret bottom (Thickest) E string. Next we could play the 7th fret of the E string and then move to the 4th fret on the A string. Keeping it all around a smaller area we would then play the 7th fret on the A string and then the 4th fret of the D string. Ending with the 7th fret on the D string as it is an octave above our root. We could now reverse this a come back to our original starting point or continue up higher. There are no rules for how many notes you play or what order you play them only the notes involved in your phrase.

Major Penatatonic Minor Pentatonic Aeolian Blues
Dorian Harmonic Minor Hindu Ionian
Locrian Lydian Mixolydian Phrygian


Which scale to play

These are all the modes of the major scale.

1. Ionian mode (the major scale)
2. Dorian mode
3. Phrygian mode
4. Lydian mode
5. Mixolydian mode
6. Aolian mode (the natural minor scale)
7. Locrian mode

For demonstrational purposes, let's take A mixolydian as an example. As you can see in the chart below, the A mixolydian mode is the same as the D major scale and works over a A7 chord.

For for example if you wished to solo over the chord Fmaj7 you could play the Lydian scale in F or maybe the C Major scale...