Rock and Blues Scales Basics

This guide features more than 35 of the most useful scales and positions that professional rock and blues guitarists use. Each scale includes a chord chart (explained below). After you learn each scale, you can then practice playing lead lines over the chords in order to hear how they sound in context.

Learning a new scale isn’t the same as learning a new chord because you can’t just use the new scale right away. It takes time to get used to the scale’s character and to train your ear to recognize the notes that work over certain chords. Even so, learning a new scale, or even just a new position for a scale you already know, is a great way of getting your lead playing out of the musical rut we all find ourselves in from time to time.

The scales in this guide are shown in standard notation and tablature, called tab for short. In tab, the six horizontal lines represent the strings, with the 6th (thickest) string at the bottom.

Below is an example of guitar tab: the numbers represent the fret positions, and an “0” means the string should be played open. Throughout this guide, the letter names of the notes you are playing appear underneath the tab.

A chord chart includes the name of the chord above the staff and a slash for each beat of the measure on which the chord is played. Bar lines divide the music into measures, and double bar lines with dots indicate repeats.