F Major Scale Guitar Notes

The F Major Scale is an easy scale to learn on guitar. After you learn the C Major Scale, you can easily learn the F Major and G Major scales.

This guide covers everything you might want to know about the F Major scale including common open chords, note positions on a fretboard diagram, and more.

These resources are based on having your guitar in standard tuning. Read this guide on Alternate Guitar Tunings if you want to try something different.

Learn How To Play The G Minor Scale On Guitar

For every Major scale in music, there is what we call a ‘relative’ minor. A ‘relative’ scale is one that uses the same notes but is used in different ways. This means for every Major scale, there is a minor scale using the same notes.

The F Major scale and the D minor scale both use the exact same notes. The main difference between the two (to keep things simple) is the root note of each scale. In the F Major scale, the root note is ‘F’. In the D minor scale, the root note is ‘D’.

Once you learn some basic music theory you will understand how two different scales can use the same notes, but for now, all you need to do is remember that both F Major and D minor scales use the same notes.

F Major Arpeggio, Piano Keys And Guitar Tab

This means you can use all the diagrams, exercises and chords covered in this guide for both the F Major scale and the D minor scale.

The good news is that once you memorize the F Major (D minor) scale in standard tuning, it is easy to play it in Drop D tuning.

All you need to do is remember that the low E string is now a D string (same note positions as the fourth string) and everything else stays the same.

The D Major Scale

The F Major scale is easy to remember because it only contains one flat note. The notes in the F Major Scale are: F G A Bb C D E

Even if you don’t know how to read music, if you see a key signature with only one flat symbol, it means the music is in F Major (or D minor).

The notes in the D minor scale are: F G A Bb C D E. As you can see, it’s the exact same notes as the F Major scale. The D minor scale starts on ‘D’ (called the root note) and the F Major scale starts on ‘F’, but both scales contain the same seven notes.

The Key Of A Major For Guitar

The key point to remember with the F Major scale is Bb (B flat). You only need to remember that the F Major scale uses B flat and all the other notes are natural (not sharp or flat).

This is why the F Major scale is so easy to learn after you learn the C Major scale. All you need to do to change from C Major to F Major is remember to lower the note B by one fret to get B flat.

You want to pay extra attention to F because it’s the root note, so you want to be able to easily find those note positions while improvising or writing riffs.

How To Play F Major Scale On Guitar

Tip: you may notice that this scale doesn’t use the open B string. This is why the scale isn’t as popular as the C Major or G Major scales. If you accidentally play the open B string while in the key of F, you’ll notice that it sounds out of place.

If you’ve already spent time memorizing the C Major scale, it should only take a day or two of practice to fully memorize the F Major scale.

If you don’t know how to read the above example, find out how to read Standard Notation in this guide and how to read Guitar TAB in this guide. Knowing at least one of these methods can significantly speed up your progress.

A Guide To Guitar Major Scales

Try playing the four examples to get a feel for how F Major sounds and where the correct notes are on the fretboard.

Instead of merely running up and down scale shapes, I recommend learning to randomly walk around the fretboard by focusing on the note names.

This feels harder in the beginning, but once you learn how to do this with one or two scales, all of the other scales quickly fall into place.

Chords In F Major: Boost Your Music Theory Skills

To be able to fully harmonize the scale, you need to be able to play some basic barre chord shapes (or really awkward open chord shapes).

You probably already know how to play the chords Am, C, and Dm. All of the other chords apart from Edim (E diminished) are barre chords.

While the F Major scale is really easy to memorize, it may not be the best starting point for beginners if you want to write chord-based songs.

The F Major Scale

Note: remember that the D minor scale uses the exact same notes as the F Major scale. This means the above chords also fit in the key of D minor.

As mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t rely on these resources. Learn how to memorize the notes on the fretboard. It might be easier to use a chart like the ones above to find your way across the fretboard, but you’ll become a far better guitarist if you properly memorize the fretboard notes.

While the above chord shapes might make it look like F Major isn’t an easy scale to write songs with, there are plenty of well-known songs in the key of F Major or D minor.

F Major Pentatonic Scale Diagram For Guitar

Songs in Drop D tend to work really well with the F Major scale. By focusing on the low open D string, the scale can be used to write songs in the key of D minor.

Check out Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold or Everybody’s Fool by Evanescence for basic examples of songs in Drop D using the F Major scale.

For more resources, check out these guides. You can get notifications on new resources, guides, lessons, and reviews by subscribing to email updates here.

Natural Minor Scale

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DISCLOSURE: articles may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, I receive a commission. Find out more here.The F major scale consists of seven notes (F, G, A, B♭, C, D and E) and has the following shape on guitar:

However, if you don’t quite understand the above chart, I invite you to read this 5-minute post to really understand what the F major scale is, its tonal distribution and, of course, how to play it on guitar.

Major Guitar Scales

Note: On the right side we can find the F major scale in bass clef while on the left we can see it in treble clef.

Thus, if we were looking for the fourth note in the harmonic scale of F major, it would be B♭ (because it occupies the 4th position), its fifth note would be C (because it occupies the 5th position), and so on and so forth.

TheF major scaleconsists of the pitchesF, G, A, B♭, C, D and E. That is cristal clear now but do you know why?

F Chord On The Guitar (f Major)

Therefore, if we take the above structure and draw the F major scale with tones and semitones, we obtain the musical degrees mentioned above:

If you still don’t understand the above chart, just think that a half step (or semitone) corresponds to a fret on the guitar and a whole step (or tone) corresponds to 2 frets.

Therefore, between F and G there are 2 frets (2 semitones or one tone) and between A and B♭ there is only one fret (because the distance is only half a tone).

Guitar Modes & Scales

In any case, to memorize and play the F major guitar scale we can break the above diagram into a series of patterns to help us.

At this point we are going to learn how to play the F major scale. To do this, I have written the below tab (tablature) so you can use it to practice the F major scale ascending and descending along the fingerboard.

To practice the F major scale on acoustic or electric guitar just go to the 1st fret and start following the above tab (if you don’t know how to read guitar tabs you can take a look at this link).

Major Scale Patterns

And if you are a beginner and are learning to play the guitar from scratch I advise you to practice it with a metronome at a speed of 80 BPM.

As far as chords are concerned, if we harmonize this major scale in the key of F we get the following triads:

This is really simple, since in the case of the F♭ major scale we only have to reduce one semitone to all the degrees that form the scale.

F Sharp Major Scale For Guitar

And that concludes today’s lesson. As I always say, now it’s your turn to pactice the F major scale on guitar, ukulele, piano, violin or whatever instrument you play.

Posted by zodaries14