The C major scale is the easiest scale to understand, mostly because the entire music system is based on the C major scale note intervals. The advantage that a lead guitarist has over people who play other musical instruments, like piano for instance, is that the fretboard lends itself to patterns. By this I mean that if you learn how to play one scale, like A major for example, then the fingering patterns are exactly the same for any other major guitar scale, except that they’re played at a different place on the fretboard.

Lead guitar patterns make the learning curve on the guitar a lot faster than a lot of non fingerboard type instruments. The interesting thing about the major scale is that it’s also the minor scale, the only difference being where you start playing.

The major scale is easy to understand if you think of it in terms of fret distances. 1 fret = 1 semitone, and 2 frets = 1 wholetone, also referred to simply as a tone. Here then are the fret distances for playing it, and it should be noted (pardon the pun) that the first note of the scale is the key. Tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, and then one more tone brings you back to the first note an octave higher.

If you have the note names for each string on the guitar, and you know that the C major scale is CDEFGABC, and that E and F are only a semitone apart, and so are B and C, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to work out the C major scale all the way up the fretboard. Another quicker alternative is to check it with this page on the Major scale lead guitar patterns

Oh, and by the way, If you want to find the corresponding minor scale for any major key, it’ll be the note three frets back, as in lower in pitch.

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