At this point we've gone through a few scales and learned how to use them over backing chord progressions.  Lets now take a step back from scales and focus on how to apply them in real world scenarios.  

​This is important because so far I have been providing you with chord progressions and telling you what scale to play over it.  But if you play in a band and want to play a solo, you will have to identify this yourself.  So let me teach you how to do this.

Buckle up, we're about to go deep down the rabbit hole..

Below is a diagram showing the fretboard. 

Now before you panic, am I suggesting that you need to memorize the entire fret board? Not necessarily, although it wouldn't be a bad idea. But one cool thing about the guitar is there are patterns you can recognize that are repeatable regardless of which note you are playing, so a full memorization is not required.

My advice to you, at a minimum memorize every note on the low E string. From here, I will teach you a few tricks to figure out the rest of the notes.
​
One thing you will notice is many of the frets can actually be represented by two different notes, both the sharp (represented by "#" after the note) and the flat (represented by "b" after the note). I am not going to go too deep into music theory here, we'll save that for a private lesson if you want, but for now just know that fret could be either note. Regardless, the sound the note will produce is the exact same. Don't overthink it.

Lets start with the example from Lesson 4: the Minor Scale starting on the 5th fret.

You will notice the first fret of the scale is on the 5th fret of the low E string. As you can see from the fretboard diagram above, this fret is represented by the note "A". Therefore this is in the key of A minor ​and thus would be the A Minor Scale.  You can apply this same logic to the Minor Pentatonic Scale and the Minor Blues Scale as well.

Each chord progression I have given you throughout this course has been in the key of A minor.   Now lets say you wants to play in the key of B minor, what then? If you take a look at the fretboard listed in the beginning of this chapter, you can see that B is found on the 7th fret of the low E string. Move the same form you played for the pentatonic minor box 1 on the 5th fret up to the 7th fret.
​
Below is a tab of this:

It's pretty simple right?  You just identify the first note of the scale, and this determines the key.

​Lets take a look at one more.  I want you to tell me what key the below scale is.  Hint:  there is more than one right answer.

Did you figure it out?  The correct answer could be one of two different keys.  You could have said either A sharp Minor or B flat Minor.  

This part is pretty simple right?  You memorize these scale patterns, and whichever note you start on determines the key.  But how do you figure out what key the backing chord progression is in?  Lets examine this.

​Below is the backing chord progression from Lesson #2.  Lets examine the root notes of each chord.  

If you look back at the fretboard diagram you'll see this an A, C, D, back to C then repeat.  If you look at the A Minor Pentatonic Scale, you will see this is the first three notes of the scale.

Since these three notes are all represented by this scale, that's a pretty good indicator that the key of the riff is A minor, and the scale you should use is the A Minor Pentatonic Scale.

Lets look at another, and this time you tell me what key, and what scale fits.

This one follows the same pattern as the last riff but is moved up two frets to the B power chord.  Therefore you should know that the key is B minor, and the appropriate scale would the B Minor Pentatonic Scale.

Lets look at one more.  Below is the riff from Lesson #4.  Can you tell me what key and what scale you would use?

This one is a little bit trickier because we are using full chords (triads) instead of power chords like before.  Following the same formula you will see the chords are A minor, D minor, E Minor, Back to D Minor, and repeat.  Each of these root notes is found in the key of A minor, but this time since we played full chords we should use the A Minor Scale, not the Pentatonic. 

Whenever you see a full chord used, you know it will go beyond the scope of the Pentatonic Scale.  (The Minor Scale has all of the notes of the Pentatonic plus more).

Conclusion:

I've packed a lot of information in this lesson and I can understand if you are confused your first time going through it.  Feel free to email me at matt@guitarcram.com with any questions and I would be happy to clarify.

This one topic could be a MUCH larger course on its own, and I admittedly have given you an overly simplistic method of figuring this out.  But my advice is start with this, and focus on the scales in the beginning.  

Very frequently in popular music songs will start with the chord that represents the key (i.e. first chord of the song is G minor, there's a good chance the song is in G minor.  Not always, but often it's a good indicator.  Now if you play in the styles of jazz or classical it will be much more complicated, but in general popular music will be much more simple.

Click the link for lesson #6 below.

Lesson 6