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Every guitarist learning to improvise lead solos at some point will face the dilemma of which scale to use over the seemingly infinite variation of chord progressions. This can be a very difficult subject requiring a lot of experience and theory knowledge. Most sources of information on the subject will either go into to too much detail or worse, be very vague. Fair enough, it's a complicated subject, trouble is however, the explanations often miss a very important point. A large percentage of chord progressions in songs the average beginner will be playing will often be in just one key or mostly in one key. This quick guide is not a one size fits all but is essential learning, a few basics that will take you a long way to choosing the right scale.

The first thing of course is the first chord played will often be the root or home key of the required scale. This idea works in many cases but it's not a guaranteed method. The last chord in a song is more likely to be the home key. Some songs fade out with no real end so the trick is to pick up the guitar and play around with the chords, look for the one that feels like it should end on if you wanted to just strum the last chord. This is going to be the home key.

The next step is to look at the chords in the song and find what key they all belong to. Some won't be strictly all in one key so what we are looking for is what's most likely, what chords come up more often that seem to be centred around one key set. The only hard part with this is you will need to either use a look up chart or learn to memorise the basic key sets. This is the best method and it's not too hard to do with a bit of practice. Once you have established the key then you have pretty much found the scale you want.

Many songs will be in either a minor or major key. Just learning the major key chord sets is enough because minor keys use the same chords, only with a different starting point … the sixth degree of the major scale or relative minor. For instance in the key of C major the chords are C Dm Em F G Am Bdim C. The sixth chord is the relative minor so for the key of A minor we have the same chords but now starting from the A. This gives us Am Bdim C Dm Em F G Am. In other words if the chords in a song all belong to the key of C major but the home key feels like A then the key is most likely to be A minor. All you need to do now is memorise or print the basic chords for major keys. Here they are…

Key of C Major - C Dm Em F G Am Bdim 
Key of Db Major - Db Ebm Fm Gb Ab Bbm Cdim 
Key of D Major - D Em F#m G A Bm Cdim 
Key of Eb Major - Eb Fm Gm Ab Bb Cm Ddim 
Key of E Major - E F#m G#m A B C#m D#dim 
Key of F Major - F Gm Am Bb C Dm Edim 
Key of F# Major - F# G#m A#m B C# D#m E#dim 
Key of G Major - G Am Bm C D Em F#dim 
Key of Ab Major - Ab Bbm Cm Db Eb Fm Gdim 
Key of A Major - A Bm C#m D E F#m G#dim 
Key of Bb Major - Bb Cm Dm Eb F Gm Adim 
Key of B Major - B C#m D#m E F# G#m A#dim