Lesson three in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers your first scale, the most simple guitar scale called the minor pentatonic scale.  The minor pentatonic is great to learn because it is very easy for most guitarists to play and is extremely adaptable to most any chord progression you’ll hear in a song or on the radio.  Guitar note charts organize notes into good sounding scales.

The scale covered in the lesson is A minor, which was chosen because of its relationship to the I-IV-V chord progression demonstrated in lesson two.  When you play the pentatonic (5 note) A minor scale over the I-IV-V progression A-D-E (major chords) you end up with a nice rock sounding chord progression with a kind of darker / edgier lead playing over it.  The other reason to choose the pentatonic minor scale is because of the simplicity and flexibility of the note pattern.  It’s easy to play yet many note combinations are possible and with some simple tricks, licks (note and trick combinations) and other tips (all available on the DVD lessons previewed here) it’s possible you may never need to learn anything else to play amazing sounding guitar.