Six Essential Ukulele Scales

The six essential scales are: Blues, Major Pentatonic, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian. From the six essential scales, you can get through a wide variety of traditional and contemporary music.

A scale is simply a collection of pitches or notes, not really a "this is a Jazz scale", "this is a Blues" or "this is a Rock scale". It's how a scale is used that really matters not its name.

Most music starts with a scale. The melody, chords, licks and riffs all can be related back to a particular scale or scales.

QuickStart scale shapes summary for Blues/Minor Pentatonic, one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

The Bues/MInor Pentatonic scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

Here are the chords for all 15 Pentatonic/Major Pentatonic scales.

The scale formula, based on the major scale is:

1 b3 5 b7 8.

Essential C Pentatonic or Major Pentatonic scale patterns for ukulele.

Learning scales typically starts with learning a position or pattern by shape. For a lot of players that's where it stops. With the many possible shapes between chords and scales to learn - there has to be a better way - There is!!!

The Pentatonic/Major Pentatonic scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

Here are the chords for all 15 Pentatonic/Major Pentatonic scales.

QuickStart scale shapes summary for Ionian/Major, one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

The Ionian/Major scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know. Here are the chords for all 15 Ionian/Major scales.

From the Ionian/Major scale all other diatonic and pentatonic scales can be derived.

The Ionian/Major scale formula is:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.

QuickStart scale shapes summary for Aeolian/Natural Minor, one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

The scale formula for this scale, based on the major scale is:

1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 8´.

The Aeolian/Natural Minor scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

Here are the chords for all 15 Aeolian/Natural Minor scales.

The scale formula, based on the major scale is:

1 2 b3 5 b6 b7 8.

QuickStart scale shapes summary for Dorian/Minor, one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

The Dorian/Minor scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

Here are the chords for all 15 Dorian/Minor scales.

The scale formula, based on the major scale is:

1 2 b3 5 6 b7 8.

QuickStart scale shapes summary for Mixolydian/Dominant, one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

The Mixolydian/Dominant scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know. Here are the chords for all 15 Mixolydian/Dominant scales.

The scale formula, based on the major scale is: 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 8.

Whether it’s connecting licks, riffs, scale positions, arpeggios, sequences or melodies – navigating the fingerboard and connecting the various positions - it’s all about using sound fingering principles. I’ve adapted Chuck Anderson’s, The Six Secrets of Guitar Fingering to the ukulele in my book The Six Secrets of Ukulele Fingering. It’s from these six fingering principles that connecting positions and navigating the multitude of possible pathways on the ukulele can become second nature.

The C Major Scale is typically the first Full Diatonic major scale that most players learn. It’s the first scale to learn when stating to explore music theory - the principles of music.

The first lesson on Navigating the C Major Scale did not include string four when using C Tuning - High G. I mentioned that mastering the positions and scale using strings three, two and one would set you up for expanding any position to the lower string four.