Jazz Guitar Scales Youtube

Learning jazz guitar scales can be complicated and often beginners wonder which scales they should learn first. The 7 scales on the chart below are a good place to start. These scales are essential for beginning jazz guitarists and enable you to play over almost any jazz standard.

This lesson is by no means meant to be complete but gives you a good overview of the most important jazz guitar scales. For each scale, there are 2 positions on the scale chart. These are the most important positions you should learn first. Once you master these two, make sure you learn all other positions as well.

Below the scale chart, you’ll find some more tips on how to practice scales, as well as understand how to use them.

George Benson, Don't Get Stuck On One Blues Scale Position! 10 Fret, Position Shifting Blues Lick!

First, you should be able to play the scales up and down, from the low string to the high string and back, without hesitation and without hiccups along the way. All notes should sound clean and even.

When we first start learning guitar scales, we usually play the scale vertically on the neck, from the lowest to the highest note in a particular position. This is a necessary step, but don’t limit yourself to that because it’s hard to see the connection between the different positions that way.

Playing horizontally is a more advanced method of playing guitar scales and means we start left on the guitar neck and advance to the right, or the other way round. This can be done on two adjacent strings or three or four or with a skipped string, the possibilities go as far as your imagination goes. I’ll help you on your way with some examples.

Jazz Guitar Standards

Playing a scale on 1 string is a good ear training exercise and a good preparation to play what you hear. In this exercise, you play the notes of the C major scale on 1 string. Don’t think about where you place your fingers too much, but work with your ears.

The problem with this theoretical approach is that it’s not very convenient because you have to think about another scale on every chord.

As you can see in the table above, these 4 modes all have the same 7 notes, namely the notes of the C major scale (C D E F G A B), they just start on a different note.

Scale Exercises That Are Great In Solos

This means we can pick one scale (usually the scale of the Imaj7 chord), and use that scale to play over all chords that are within the key.

In the following audio example, I play the C Ionian scale up and down over a ii V I vi backing track, and you will notice all notes are in key:

Here’s a more musical example of how you can use the C Ionian scale over the same ii V I vi chord progression:

The Scale Is Not That Important

As you can see from the list above, the C minor blues scale works over the entire minor blues, but for the sake of variation, it’s a good idea to mix in other scales as well.

This means we can pick one scale (usually the scale of the Imaj7 chord), and use that scale to play over all chords that are within the key.

In the following audio example, I play the C Ionian scale up and down over a ii V I vi backing track, and you will notice all notes are in key:

Here’s a more musical example of how you can use the C Ionian scale over the same ii V I vi chord progression:

The Scale Is Not That Important

As you can see from the list above, the C minor blues scale works over the entire minor blues, but for the sake of variation, it’s a good idea to mix in other scales as well.

Posted by zodaries14

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