E Whole Tone Scale on Classical Guitar

Play the E Whole Tone scale on Classical Guitar with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Whole Tone scale has 6 notes per octave and belongs to the symmetric family.

E is available as an open string on Classical Guitar, and 2 of its 5 open strings are scale tones — E (the root), D (the flat 7th). The A, G and B strings sit outside the scale. Open, the strings cover E2 to E4.

Weightless and dreamlike — six equal whole steps with no leading tone, so nothing pulls anywhere. Blurry, floating, and faintly unsettling, like a dream sequence.

Heard in: Impressionist piano (Debussy's "Voiles"), Thelonious Monk's runs, dream-sequence film cues, and the augmented and 7#5 chords it fits in jazz.

It has nylon strings on a wider, flatter neck than a steel-string guitar, which is why it is played fingerstyle rather than with a pick.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the E Whole Tone scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of E to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.