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Scales are a fundamental part of music, so learning and practicing them is absolutely essential to becoming a successful guitar player. If you’re anything like me when I started out, you might find the task of learning and practicing scales a little daunting. This blog post is devoted to some ideas on what you can do to master scales. First things first, for those of you who don’t know, a musical scale is a sequence of notes arranged in a pattern of whole steps (the distance between two frets on the fretboard) and half steps (the distance between one fret on the fretboard). fretboard) are arranged ), (e.g. major scale : WWH WWWH). By using the notes of a scale, you can create endless melodies and chords. Okay, now that that’s done, let’s get started!
Learn the notes on the fretboard
It’s important to know where all notes are on the fretboard, especially on the 6th and 5th strings, since the root of most scales begins on these strings. There are dozens of ways you can do this. I strongly recommend going to Ricci Adams’ musictheory.net. If you go to trainer and click on guitar trainer you will find a program to help you learn your notes. It’s a great little program and I’ve found it to help immensely. Try to practice learning your notes a little every day.
Learn more than one scale shape for each scale
Being able to play a scale in multiple positions on the fretboard can mean the difference between a great player and a mediocre one. Learning many different scale shapes in different positions will help open up the fretboard, giving you more options and flexibility when playing solo.
Learn the individual notes that make up a musical scale
This is a much more effective way of learning scales than just learning the different scale shapes. When you know exactly what notes make up a scale and how those notes relate to the chord they’re played over, you have much more control over what you play. This is especially true when improvising. A good way to do this is to take a scale you’re learning and play it very slowly, ascending and descending, naming each note as you go. You can also do this by replacing the note names with the scale degree of each note (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Then you can start making up little melodies and naming the notes (or scale degrees) you’re using.
Get a balance reference guide
It’s always a good idea to have a way to look up scales, and there are dozens of books that do just that. I personally use Hal Leonard’s Incredible Scale Finder. It has over 1300 scales and is designed to make them all easy to find. But really any book that lists scales should do it.
Be sure to practice using a metronome
I cannot stress enough the importance of a metronome. Practicing scales and other technique exercises while using a metronome allows you to develop a solid sense of timing and helps you keep scales at a slow tempo until you’re able to play faster.
improvise
Creating improvised solos is a great way to practice scales. Choose a scale and play the radio or your favorite CD. You can also visit jamcenter.com, a great site that has a variety of backing tracks in different keys and styles to jam along to.
Thanks to Michelle Monette | #Tips #Tricks #Learning #Practicing #Guitar #Scales
