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The major scale is a very common scale. It's often used in popular music. The most common major scale is C Major, because this scale is easy to remember (it doesn't have any flats or sharps). We will start with an overview of the notes available in C Major and how C Major has to be played on your guitar. We also give you some chord sequences to give you an idea how C Major can be used.

The C Major Scale

Let's begin with the theory of major scales. A Major scale has the following intervals

1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2

This is the same for all the Major scales. Now all we have to do is start counting, beginning with C.

C D E F G A B C
1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2

You can see that C Major doesn't have any flats or sharps. This is why this scale is so often used, it's easy to remember.

Playing C Major on your guitar

But you have a guitar (this still is a guitar magazine). So let's look at your fret board. You notice that we have a C on the low E string (8th fret). This will be our starting point. We play the C with our middle finger! so you'll have your index finger available for the 7th fret. So, playing C Major on your guitar goes like this:

Normal notation and guitar tabalature:

cmajor scale

C Major - 2nd Position on the Guitar

You've probably noticed that there's also a C on the fifth string of your guitar. So there should be another way to play C Major. Well, there is another way to play C Major on your guitar.

Playing C Major on your Guitar in 2nd position

This scale doesn't end with a C. That doesn't matter. You could play the remaining B and C on the E string on the 7th and 8th fret.

Tab and normal notation:

cmajor scale