Guitar Scales - Learn to play lead

Learning guitar scales doesn’t have to be a daunting task; you will easily learn many basic scales here with my easy to follow instructions. There are many benefits to learning how to play scales which include; lead guitar basics, playing melodic lead, and even impress your friends.

One of the best ways to learn is to listen and learn from one who plays these scales and from many pictorial examples. During these lessons you will be shown some real images of guitar scales that you can save or print to enhance your skills. You will be shown the G major scale, basic pentatonic scale, and minor melodic pentatonic scale and more.

Not only will I show you several scales but I will also explain to you how to play them in full or in part. Yes you can play scales in part and most of the time this is where you get the melody for your lead licks when playing any song. In fact, most lead guitarist only plays part of a scale when playing lead licks. I won’t go in great detail on this page but here is an example of a pentatonic scale and other scales will resemble this one.

I will tell you however, if you want to play this scale here start at the low E string which is the 6th string (the large one) and pick each note starting from left to right. The proper fingering is to use your index finger for the left notes and your 4th and 3rd finger for the notes on the right. The 4th finger helps you to reach the notes on the frets that are further away, and the 3rd finger helps to reach the notes that are 3 frets over.

Usually the first note on the 6th string to your left is your root note. Let’s say if you want to use this scale with the root note being G, then you would start on the 3rd fret and follow the pattern as shown for the other notes with their perspective frets and strings. Although you can learn to memorize many guitar scales it is better to learn where the notes are on the fret board so that you can mix your scales up for better improvising.

Follow the links at the bottom of this page to go to the scales page for each type of scale that you will be learning, and always come back to this site often for more scales being added.

Learn the G Major scale

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