Original Articles

Where do you start? What should you learn? Two of the first things you should learn are some chords and a scale or two. I’m going to share with you a couple of the easiest scales to learn for a beginner. These two, the C Major and the G Major, are where you should start. The both are very commonly used and they’re easy to play.

C Major Scale

The C Major scale is one of the easiest scales for beginners to learn on the guitar. It is a great scale to use as a building block for more scales and chords later on. I teach it to all of my students first. It is also the scale position that you need if you want to learn to read standard notation. This is the first scale you should learn (well, maybe the pentatonic scale).

E|———————————————-0-1-3—|
B|————————————-0-1-3————|
G|——————————0-2———————|
D|———————0-2-3—————————-|
A|————0-2-3————————————-|
E|—-0-1-3———————————————|

G Major Scale

The G Major is also one of the easy scales for beginning guitarists to learn. It is used to play thousands of different songs in many styles of music including country, rock, pop. It is usually the second key you will learn to read notes with because it only has 1 sharp in it. This scale is also used in conjunction with the C Major scale often.

E|————————————————0-2–3—|
B|—————————————0-1-3————-|
G|——————————0-2————————|
D|———————0-2-4——————————-|
A|————0-2-3—————————————-|
E|—0-2-3————————————————-|

More Easy Guitar Scales For Beginners

If you would like to learn more easy scales, you should learn the E minor Pentatonic and the A minor Pentatonic scales. Both of these scales are very commonly used, especially in the blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Scales are essential for writing songs and playing guitar solos, so get to it!