During the 9 years that I have taught guitar, I have seen many people who struggle to learn, master and apply the scales on the fretboard in a fluid and efficient way. The biggest problem is the way people learn guitar scales. There are easy ways to do it, but rarely do I see the subject approached in the best way.

The topic of learning guitar scales is more than I can cover in this article, but here are some tips to get you started in the right direction. These steps will help you on your way to mastering guitar scales and will make all your learning easier later on.

The first things you should do are:

• First memorize all the positions of the C major scale. Sounds like a good place to start, doesn’t it?
• Second, learn to name the natural notes on each string, starting with the open note. Knowing the names of the notes will help you later to understand the notes of the scales and will make it easier for you to learn the notes.
• Third, you must be able to play each scale position up and down fluently, and also be able to raise and lower the natural notes on each string separately. If you can master these two simple tasks, it will make everything else easier. Make sure you know those scales well!
• The fourth step is where it starts to get more interesting. here you should start trying to move around the fretboard, going from scale to scale, string to string. It still doesn’t matter how musical or fine it sounds, the point is to become familiar with roaming around the fretboard.

These are the first steps you need to take to master the scales on your fretboard. I make sure all my serious private students master these steps first. Mastering these steps will make the next part of the process much easier. This brings you to where the fun really begins! You can then start putting the balance to good use!