Scales on Guitar that Sound Like Beautiful Melodies

Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson

Hey guys, today I want to show you how you can make scales on guitar sound like beautiful melodies.

Scales are an essential tool for guitar players and music in general. Consider this; almost the entire music system is built on a major scale—chords, intervals, cadences, keys, just to mention a few.

Do you want to improve your technique? Practice scales!

Where the C major chord comes from? Scales

Time to put together a few chords and create a beautiful chord progression. You can learn that from scales.

Today we will use scales on guitar to create beautiful melodies in A minor’s key using a straightforward two-step process. 1) Learn the scale in five different positions: 2) Create beautiful melodies.

We will learn the A minor scale on the top three strings in five different positions then I will show you a few melodic ideas on each position.

We start with the A minor scale because it’s the easiest scale to learn on guitar, and the five positions are easy to memorize. It’s also easy to play the 5th open string (A) and use it as a bass note/chord.

The awesome thing about this exercise is that we can break down each position into 5/6 notes so that it’s easy for you to create simple melodies.

I consider that to be a completely different way to practice and play scales on the guitar.

Maybe we could call it a “Melodic” way to play scales on the guitar.

I hope this fingerstyle guitar lesson inspires you to practice scales more and write your own phrases.

Let’s get started.

The Video

Scales Diagram

Let me show you the five different positions you’ll have to learn to start creating your own melodies.

The scale will not necessarily start from the root note (A); in fact, only position 1 starts with the note A.

Practicing scales starting from a different note that the fundamental will give you a versatile approach when creating the melodies, so embrace the challenge and don’t give up just after a few attempts.

It might take a while before you feel confident enough to play or create the melodies. Understand that this is a pretty challenging exercise that requires fretboard knowledge and technique, and creativity.

Just take things to step by step and focus on one position before moving on to the next one.

Here’s the scale diagram.

From Scale to Melody

Once you’ve memorized all the positions, you’ll be able to play a few melodic ideas.

In this video, I will show you a few examples for each scale position so that you can get inspired. It would then help if you started creating your own melodies and slowly developing your creativity and musicality.

The most amazing this about playing melodic scales on the guitar is that you can really start creating melodies using just 2/3 notes.

Don’t play all the time! Instead, use pauses to fill in the gaps between the notes. With time, you should create more complex phrases that are rhythmically interesting and fun to play.

Fun is part of the deal!

I hope you get inspired and get to play more and more of these beautiful melodic scales on the guitar.