16 Steps To Guitar Scale Mastery
One of the most difficult aspects of learning to play lead guitar at an advanced level is the ability to turn those scales into music. There are a lot of books and websites that cover guitar scales, but aside from showing a fretboard map of the scale most don’t do a good job explaining a method to really use them to make music.
After a lot of struggling and frustration I was able to finally get a grip on using scales to make music. I hope this article can help you in your guitar practice.
1. Start Out Slow
Play the scale pattern slowly ascending and descending. The first step is to get to know it and to train your fingers to know it. Pay attention to the location of each degree of the scale, especially the root notes. Once you get the hang of the scale pattern, play it in all 12 keys. It’s a good idea to practice them in this order (the circle of 4ths):
C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb B E A D G
(Don’t worry if you don’t know about circle of 4ths – I will cover that in a future post).
2. Scale, Arpeggio, And Chord
Play the scale, the arpeggio, and the chord. This is a very important step to learn how all these elements fit together.
3. Get In The Groove
Once you are familiar with the scale pattern, play 8th notes (2 notes per beat) with the metronome. Use alternate picking, even across strings. Begin with a moderately slow tempo, 80 to 100 beats per minute, or slower if need be. Remember, speed is not important yet. Right now the most important thing is accuracy. Make sure you are playing in time with the metronome. When you find that you are off, just focus and get back with it. Make every note solid and even.
4. Speed It Up, Gradually
Once you are comfortable with the scale pattern, slowly increase the tempo on your metronome. You want to find the tempo where you can play it as fast as you can without making many mistakes. Once again every note should be solid and even. Remember, if you practice sloppy you will play sloppy.
5. Track Your Progress
It is essential that you keep track of your tempo in your practice journal so that you can pick up where you left off the next time you practice. This is the key to develop speed. It is my experience that to begin with you will be able to increase your speed very quickly. At that stage you feel like you’ll be shredding in just a few weeks! But eventually you will reach a point where you feel stuck. Don’t be discouraged just keep practicing. You will still be able to go faster, it’s just going to take more work and more time. Remember, you have the rest of your life to work on it!
6. Don’t Just Drill, Make Some Music
Once you have become familiar with a scale, you need to start learning how to use it. Start with a play along practice track or a computer program like Band-in-a-Box to loop the appropriate chord and play along. To begin with just play the scale up and down, then try to be creative with it. Have some fun!
7. Mix It Up
After you have a few scales under your fingers you should work on combining scales. Start with common chord changes. For example if you are working on the Mixolydian scale, which fits over a V7 (dominant) chord, work on resolving it to the I (tonic) chord. For example, you could record yourself playing D7 and G, or Gmaj7, 4 bars each over and over again. Then play it back and solo over it. It’s really easy to do this with Band-in-a-Box. You can control the tempo, instrumentation, and groove with just a few clicks of your mouse. And there are a lot of play-along materials available to help you work on certain scales and chord progressions.
8. Apply The Scales To Real Tunes
That’s what all this is about! Focus on a certain common chord progression and find tunes that give you a chance to work them out. After a while work on another common chord changes and find more tunes.
9. Learn The Melody
Make sure you learn the melody to every tune you play. Analyze the melody to see how it fits into the scales. and how the scales relate to the chords. Learn to play them in as many different areas of the fingerboard as you can in all the CAGED forms.
10. Embellish
Base your solo on the melody of a song. Changing rhythms, adding or subtracting notes, and embellishing the melody is a great way to find good solo ideas.
11. Shut Up And Listen!
Listen to what other people play. Listening is the most important thing a musician can do. Figure out and analyze what your favorite guitarists play. One of the best ways to become a better soloist is to copy players that you admire. Don’t be afraid to steal from others, believe me everyone does it! Take ideas from other players, learn them well and then change them around a bit to make them your own.
12. Expand Your Horizons
Don’t limit yourself to just what guitarists play. Copy horn players, pianists, and even bass solos. Guitarists tend to do things that are convenient on the guitar. You will find that learning a saxophone or trumpet solo will help you find new and interesting ways to put notes together. There are lots of great books of transcriptions available to help you along.
13. Play What You Sing
Here’s a great way to get to the music you know is in your soul. Record yourself singing a solo along with a play along track. Just relax and let it rip! I’m sure you can come up with all kinds of cool stuff. Then play it back and figure out how to play what you sang.
14. Sing What You Play
Another great idea is to sing what you play while you are playing the guitar. Start by limiting yourself to only 2 notes. Once you can sing and play the same notes comfortably, add another note. Keep adding one note at a time, as you get comfortable. This is a great way to get a handle on the notes in any scale so that you can make music out of it.
I’ll never forget the night I saw the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith. He was grunting and humming the entire time he played. It didn’t take me long to realize that in his mind he was singing what he played. If you don’t know who Jimmy Smith is, believe me you definitely should find out. That night was one of the greatest musical performances I have ever witnessed, and I’ve seen a lot of great musicians in my time! So if Jimmy Smith does it, believe me, it will work for you.
15. Write It Down
Keep a lick book. A lick book is a notebook where you write down ideas. Some you may get from listening to other guitar players, and some you may compose yourself. This is a great way to build up your own personal bag of tricks.
16. Play It All Over The Guitar
When you hear or invent a lick you really like, it’s a great idea to figure out how to play it in all the CAGED forms. Then play the idea in all 12 keys. For a real challenge, play it in all 12 keys in one area of the fretboard. Remember, wherever your hand is you can reach any note, usually in 2 octaves.
Conclusion
Most of all, be patient and keep going at it. Sometimes it feels like you are never going to get it, it can be very frustrating. But if you keep practicing you will get it. And keep in mind that learning to play guitar is a process that never ends. No matter what you can do, there is always more to learn. And that’s one thing that makes it so great, isn’t it?
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Free Guitar Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Find Guitar Teachers September 9th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Thanks for the tips. I’m going to incorporate this into my practice routine.