Uke Scales - Diagrams

I just wanted to contribute to this thread a bit :3 You guys might have noticed that aside from the minor pentatonic, there seems to be an absence of minor scales like Gm Dm Am and all that fun stuff. Well, they are actually there. Every major key has a relative minor, you find it by taking the 6th note in the scale and make it the first note. So for example, in C, we have C D E F G A B C. It's relative key is Am, and thus, the a minor scale is A B C D E F G A. So if you want to play a solo in Aminor, use the C scale! Tada :D
 
Thanks for all your work, grumpy! These charts are great reminders and they're visually appealing to look at.

I also wanted to add to what hidden character said. There are three kinds of minor scales, the natural minor, the harmonic minor, and the melodic minor. The natural minor is explained very well by hidden character. The relative minor of C major is A minor. You use the same notes except you think of A as the main note. In the harmonic minor, you would use G# instead of G. Using harmonic minor can sometimes give something more of a "Gypsy Kings" flavor (for lack of a better word). Finally, there is melodic minor. This one can be a bit weird at first but it's worth knowing. If you playing up the scale of A minor, say from E to A, you would use F# and G#. When you play down the scale you would play the same notes as A natural minor. If you're not playing a scale passage, you can default to A harmonic minor.

Minor scales can greatly add to the flavor of your music. Having said that however, I must confess that I tend to use minor pentatonic, major pentatonic, and major scales for at least 90% of my soloing.
 
Thanks Grumpy: As some have said, a lot of work, but much appreciated. A PDF file would be nice I suppose, but what worked for me was to go to edit on tool bar and select all, then to file on tool bar and print, and they all printed out for me. Excellent material for study/reference. I have punched them and placed them in my chord/scale book. Sometimes we need to check out a scale or run and you have provided excellent material. You will be rewarded in Ukulele heaven :) So much to learn and remember! Happy strumming and picking!! Lozark
 
A pdf and a word document containing all of GrumpyCoyote's scale diagrams are available for download here. Enjoy!
 
Wow...thanks for all of the great scales. As a beginner who has been looking for resources on scales, this is the by far the best I've seen. I'm practically drooling...Thanks again!
 
Thank you for the scales, I was searching on line yesterday for this, and what I found was OK, but what you've come up with is outstanding...
 
I think this is the answer to my question... lol I'm learning the uke on my own using the book "Ukulele Method Book 1" and so far it's been clear and simple to follow. Fantastic! It has successfully taught me the basics on the picking the notes and strumming the chords. Also fantastic. But then they put the two together, and I could not wrap my head around how to change the notes while I'm still supposed to be strumming only one chord... I played around with it for a while a tried incorporating the two, which worked for the first song but then the very next song had even more notes changing during the chords!

And so began my journey to find the answer, which has nevertheless lead me here. lol, anyway, so I was hoping that if I explained my situation clear enough to you guys would then be able to help me figure out if this diagram is the answer to how i change notes during chords... or if I'm in the completely wrong area :DD

Thanks for all the help guys! I'm psyched that I ended up on this website somehow
 
Just a quick note in regard to getting the various scales mapped for the uke, or bass, guitar, mandolin, whatever. There is a little app called Guitar Toolkit for the iPhone that I have been using for a while now, It's got a tuner, fretboard, chord listing, etc for a multitude of instruments, each in a wide variety of tuning options. Also has a metronome.

So I've had this little app for a long time and just tonight I noticed that if you select the 'fretboard' option, you can choose the info button and choose any scale, we're talking about a million permutations and combinations of the key the scale is in and the type of scale. It just maps them out for you on the fretboard. I think the app is about $6, but it's well worth it if you're out and about and want to tune your instrument or look up an odd chord or scale combination. It's got everything: Major scales, Pentatonic Blues, Balinese, Japanese, Diatonic, I could go on forever, there are nearly 100 options x the full variety of keys they can be played in.

Grumpy, awesome work on these, they will come in very handy!!

Jason
 
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Hey! Thanks for this great post!
I was gonna do this how long ago...but I was SOOOO LAZY
 
this is cool....i run into difficulty determining when to use 2 or 3 notes on a string, especially when playing in closed positions..
i do this excercise my guitar teacher showed me where i play each scale, from each degree, up and down the fingerboard...
(ex. the C maj starts on the 5th, G...then on to the 6th , A)

on guitar the scale shapes, or fingerings are duplicated with each key..but this doesnt hold true, at least for me, with ukulele.
Im sure Im doing something wrong...
these are helpful in that it shows its ok to shift backwards a fret , something Im not doing..

this may solve my problem..
if there are any charts for scales done from each degree that would be a fool proof answer , but then I suppose it could take the eureka moment away from me.
 
As a person who knows little music theory and always wanted to improvise and do the scale stuff but found it too intimidating to do you,

A great big thanks :)

Chris
 
Thanks for all the hard work GrumpyCoyote on the scales, very helpfull. Wish the PDF link still worked. I was trying to learn different patterns to play the same scale and I found one error on your diagram; on the D Major scale under First Posistion, 2nd string: you list 0,2,4 and it should be 0,2,3. Thanks again.
 
Wow!

Very Nice. All of this is a heavy concentration of mine right now. Thanks soooo much for the effort. Very clean and very useable.
 
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