Learning Guitar Scales has undoubtedly been a problem of every guitarist, as much as a question in itself as to whether or not it’s worth doing it. While it’s true that scales will help you speed up your guitar playing, it’s also unreliable as far as musical theory goes.

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You don’t really learn any music when you memorise that C major has 0 1 3 on E strings etc, but you do become familiar with some basic shapes on the guitar that help you easily improvise your solos.

If you can back up your scale learning with a bit of music theory then I strongly suggest you do this. The basic reasons is that it’s harder to think that D major chord has a F# etc then it is to remember the shape with your left hand.

One of the skills great guitarists have is the fact that they know every note on the guitar. There are little secrets regarding remembering them on the guitar, for instance 7 on a string means the note of the string before it (7 on E string means B note etc) with one exception on the B string, where the G note is found on the 8^th fret.

These are things that you will notice for yourself when you gather enough experience. You just need to learn the notes on each string and then the shapes and forms will create themselves in your mind.

These are the reasons I strongly suggest learning all notes on all the strings before you start learning scales. Once you know every note on every string it will be very easy to learn any kind of scale you like to.