G Major Scale - Play lead licks

The g major scale is one of the most basic scales to learn when playing scales. We will learn about other types of scales later on but for now let us take a look at this particular one and break down the many ways to use it.

We are going to learn not only the scale but we are going to see the different variations of the scale that you can implement to change your guitar playing around and not have the same old boring moves all the time. This is called “improvising”.

How do you improvise using a scale? You do this by many different methods which are; you play the whole scale, you play the whole scale backwards, play only the first half of the scale, and you can play only the last half of the scale.

If you are confused, well don’t fret. That is my favorite guitar humor but really, don’t worry we will break it all down so that you can understand it. I have a few images of the g major scale showing the whole scale, and part of the scale just to give you an example. You can print or save this image to later use.

Here is the scale in the image below, notice that the g scale starts on the 3rd fret. Why? Because the 3rd fret pressing the 6th string makes the g note and therefore is you’re starting point to implement the g scale. Notice the root note is colored red and you will start at the root note and play left to right using your index finger for the left notes, and your 3rd and 4th finger for the notes on the 3rd and 4th frets.

You will also notice on this scale that there is one note that you use your 2nd finger on. The trick to knowing what finger to use on a g major scale is to always start the scale from its root note, use your index finger for the left first notes, your 2nd finger for the notes on the 2nd fret, use your 3rd finger for the notes on the 3rd fret over from the previous note, and your 4th finger for the fourth fret notes.

You can play this whole scale and I do recommend that you do for practice. Play the scale frontward and backwards until you can play it faster and faster each time. Once you have got this scale down, then you can split it up and play half the scale frontward and backwards as well. Here is part of the scale in this next image below.

Notice that we have left off just the first and second string notes of the scale. If you wanted to you could just as well play the notes on the first and second strings and leave off the rest. The fact is that you will probably not ever use the entire scale while playing so this is why we show you the different variations.

Here is one more part of the g major scale that we have left some more notes off from the image below. This makes the scale even smaller in size.

Basically by cutting down the scale it helps you to learn the different variations that you can use when playing scales and will help you play those short lead licks and give you more to improvise with. Later we will explore other major scales which work pretty much the same as this one does.

Learn the A Major Scale

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