6 Types of Minor Scales - Charts and Shapes For Guitar Players

Welcome to this short lesson where we dive into one of the most mysterious and powerful tools in a guitarist’s arsenal — the diminished scale.

We’ll break down the two main forms of the diminished scale (half-whole and whole-half), explore how they relate to dominant 7♭9, 7#9 and diminished 7th chords.

The Harmonic Major Scale is a unique variation of the major scale, created by lowering the 6th degree.

This small change introduces a mix of major and minor qualities, making it useful in jazz, fusion, classical, and film music.

In this lesson, we’ll explore how to harmonize the scale into triads and 7th chords, uncovering its distinct harmonic colors.

When exploring improvisation over a major 7 chord on guitar, pentatonic scales offer versatile and melodic options.

This approach allows you to expand your phrasing and musical expression over a single chord using the relative major and minor pentatonic scales.

In this session, we'll cover 6 essential dominant scales that every guitarist should know.

These scales are the foundation for creating solos in blues, jazz, and rock styles

This guitar lesson provides 7 alternative scales to the Dorian mode.

These scales all include a supplementary note, making them octatonic scales (made of eight notes).

They can be used over minor chords and prove to be an original choice to enhance your soloing skills.

Here is a free printable sheet cheat for guitar showing the relation between the main types of arpeggios and chord voicings with fifth in the bass.

This lesson offers an easy warm up exercise for guitar implying a bebop melodic pattern and five 3-note chord voicings to play over a 2 5 progression.

You can download the transcription and chord charts in PDF format for free (or give what you want).

In the meantime here is a brief analysis of the lesson :

This page provides a free guitar cheat sheet with tab, score and chord shapes about the main types of scales harmonized in seventh chords : 

Melodic Minor

Diatonic Major Scale

Natural Minor Scale

Harmonic Minor Scale