Beginner guitar scales cheat sheet
Five scales across the whole neck, all in C so you can compare them. Print it or keep it on your phone. Open a scale below to change the key and hear it.
The 5 scales on the sheet
Open a scale to hear it, change the key or learn one position.
Printed
How to read the sheet
Each chart is the neck seen from above, with the high E string at the top and the nut on the left. A dot is a note in the scale. The number is its place in the scale, and 1 is the root.
Every scale on the sheet starts on C. To play it in another key, move every dot up or down the neck by the same number of frets. Moving everything up 2 frets turns C into D.
Which scale to learn first
Start with the minor pentatonic. It has five notes and two notes per string, and most rock and blues solos are built on it. Learn one position at a time rather than the whole neck.
The blues scale is the minor pentatonic plus one note, so it comes next. Learn the major and minor scales when you want to understand keys and chords, not only solo.
