Scales

in all 12
Keys
Jay Metcalf
Introduction

In this PDF document you will find 12 commonly used

scales written out in all 12 keys. Any music student who
wants to get serious about improvising music needs to
learn all 144 of these and more to have the necessary
tools at their disposal.

I strongly encourage my students to learn as much of

this material as possible without looking at written
notes, but sometimes a visual reference comes in
handy.

In my Harmonic Foundation course I teach students all

the scales, chords and music theory they need to study
improvisation. If you would like further explaniation of
any of the scales you find here, I think you will benefit
greatly from that course available on BetterSax.com

At the end of this PDF, there is a scale exercise that I

have applied to all 12 scales starting on C. This is to
give you something a bit more interesting to practice
but also to illustrate that once you learn a scale pattern
for one scale, you can get a lot more mileage out of it
by applying the pattern to other scales.

- Jay Metcalf
1 of 7

Major (Ionian) Aeolian (natural minor)

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2 of 7

Dorian Mixolydian

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3 of 7

Melodic Minor Harmonic Minor

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4 of 7

Major Pentatonic Minor Pentatonic

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5 of 7

Diminished (half-whole) Diminished (whole-half)

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6 of 7

Whole Tone Blues

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7 of 7

Better Sax Scale Pattern

Major Major pentatonic

Dorian Minor pentatonic

Aeolian Diminished (half-whole)

Mixolydian Diminished (whole-half)

Melodic minor Whole tone

Harmonic minor Blues

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