Guitar Scales

Knowing the scales on the guitar is a important for anyone learning to play guitar. A lot of guitarists try to skip over in learning the scales only to get “box in” when it’s their turn to solo.

Playing “box” patterns which are often taught in beginner guitar lessons is like painting with just a couple of colors, compared to having the various scales at your disposal gives you an unlimited palate of colors to choose from at your fingertips.

With these scale studies, you will learn to play electric guitar with the entire neck of your guitar. Not only will you be able to solo from the lowest notes to the highest notes on your guitar, but you will also be able start your solo virtually anywhere on the fingerboard.

Moreover, these electric guitar lessons also cover the pentatonic scale and its various inversions, as well as the chromatic scale with its entire valuable “in between” notes.

Mastering these scales will make your solos more melodic and will have you playing comfortably anywhere on the neck of your guitar.

Guitar Scales

For any type of music in the world, scales form the foundation. Have you ever wondered why some love songs sound sad and moody? The type of scales used would largely determine a song’s genre in song writing. Being able to understand guitar music scales would also allow you to have a better knowledge of guitar solos that are played by other people.

A guitar scale is basically a series of notes that follows a determined pattern within an octave. The scale pattern dictates the intervals between notes that are played. Now, there are tons of different guitar scales in guitar playing. Hence, GuitarPlayerWorld.com has dedicated one whole section of its lessons just to cover the different scales. In order to learn guitar scales more effectively, most of the guitar lessons in this section will have a “mini jam track” for you to practice and learn guitar scales. Be sure to download them and practice over them. This does wonders to your lead guitar playing.

The guitar lessons would touch on quite a bit of music theory and if you get confused at some point of time, it is perfectly normal. Take your time to understand and read through the lessons again. Approach the friendly guitar forum and guitar community for help if you ever get stuck.

In order to effectively learn guitar scales, you will need to PLAY them. Always put into practise what you have learnt! Simply inject some guitar riffs, short guitar solos into your everyday playing. In this way, you would also slowly get your creative juices flowing. One final piece of advice: DON”T GIVE UP.

Pentatonic Scale

The Pentatonic Scale is a scale that consists of 5 notes such as Minor Pentatonic Scale or Major Pentatonic Scale. You may wonder why you should use a scale with such a small amount of notes. The reason is that Pentatonic Scales offer a small margin of error when you are playing over a chord progression of the chords that go with the scale. Another reason to use the scale is if you are looking to find that rock sound.

It is important to learn the patterns below all the way up the neck so you can use this scale at any time when you are playing.

The Major Scale

The most important scale of all is the Major Scale because all modes are derived from this scale. Modes are distorted scales. In simple words, you make some notes sharp or flat. Each mode like the major scale has a quality. The major scale’s quality is happy and upbeat. These qualities which are more prevalent when you integrate the chords are shown above into your playing. There are 5 patterns.

You may be wondering why you are learning 5 patterns instead of one. This is so that you can alter to a different scale when playing without making a big jump on the fretboard. In this way you will know all the patterns and the notes of the fretboard, You will always have the scale you want within reach.

With these patterns you can change to many different modes and have the same patterns!!

The Pentatonic Scales

Pentatonic scales are the most commonly used scales in music. Learning the pentatonic scales has been an introduction to scales and modes for almost every guitar player.  Most rock, blues, and heavy metal are based on the minor pentatonic scale and you can find most country, country-rock, R&B tunes are based on the major pentatonic scale.

When we go further on pentatonic scale lessons you will be able to find very useful information on how to learn pentatonic scales. There are certain pentatonic patterns that relieve your work when learning, studying, remembering and practicing the pentatonic scales.

When you learn the scale well, turn on the radio or the player and try to find what key the song is in when you get it, try pentatonic scales in that key; minor pentatonic scale , major pentatonic scale or blues pentatonic scale. Probably, the one of them will work!

Major blues scale

The major blues scale is a variation of the major pentatonic scale just like that the minor blues scale is a variation of the minor pentatonic scale. This is the reason why they are sometimes referred to as pentatonic blues scales. By adding the b3 “blue note” to the major pentatonic scale, the music will have that familiar bluesy sound.  The blue note usually used as a passing note and if you hold this note too long it sounds like off key.

The formula of the major blues scale is 1 2 b3 3 5 6

However the major blues scale consisting of six notes still has all the facilities of the pentatonic scales; easy to remember and play fingering patterns, good over many chord progressions and so on. Also, major blues scale can be played interchangeably with the major pentatonic scale.

The scale has a cheerful sound and finds itself used in musical styles like country and bluegrass.

Perfect Pitch (Absolute Pitch)

The skill to distinguish a musical note without a reference point is unusual even amongst trained musicians, commonly known as ‘‘perfect pitch’’ or, ‘‘absolute pitch’’. To those with perfect pitch each sound has a name and nuance that is familiar in isolation just like colors; you do not need to see red to recognize yellow.

Within the scientific community the genetic basis for perfect pitch or absolute pitch has been vocally debated for over a century: one side of the argument are those people who believe that it is learned early in life by ear training, and the other, those people who believe it is innate. Although characteristics of perfect pitch differ from one person to other, genetic basis of perfect pitch cannot be disregarded.

Positions of the Major Scale

In your growth as a lead guitarist, it becomes increasingly important to learn to solo in more than one position. If, for instance, you are soloing in the key of C major, and you only feel comfortable playing in the few frets surrounding the eighth fret, then you are restraining yourself unnecessarily.

The primary position of the major scale is the “standard” way of playing the major scale, which a lot of guitarists know. If it looks new to you, play through it. This is the “do re mi fa sol la ti do” scale you probably learned in school. Begin the scale with your second finger, and do not alter your hand position while playing the scale. Make sure to play the scale backwards and forwards, slowly and evenly, until you have it memorized.

Guitar Gifts

Guitar gifts have many good choices at all price points, and many reputable online retailers to buy from. Despite these, it can be difficult to sort through them and find just the right guitar gift.

However there is no need to worry for we have picked up a manageable few, and provide you with specific suggestions based on the experience level of the guitar player.

Guitar Playing

Once you become familiar bit about how music is structured and where it is located on the fret board, you must get those strings vibrating to create music. This means coordinating both hands. The fret board hand must be holding the strings down firmly to allow them to vibrate, and the picking hand must attack the strings neatly to prevent unnecessary notes from confusing the sound. This may take time and patience but practice is the only way to get there. Your finger tips will definitely hurt for a little while, as your calluses build up, and soon enough you won’t feel any discomfort. Be sure that you play at least a little each day to maintain their insensitivity.

The fret board hand will also need time to feel at ease with some of the chord shapes, some of which require spreading the fingers out quite a bit, and moving from one chord to another may impossible when you first start playing. However don’t feel discouraged, practice will make perfect.

To be able to get the best leverage, power and control over the fret board hand, make it a habit early on to keep the thumb as close to the middle of the back of the neck as possible. It should line up with your index finger. You will find if you keep the thumb and index finger lined up, the other three fingers will be able to work independently. As your hand moves, this thumb/index combo moves with it. Your elbow must be dropped, everything should be calm. It’s very easy for the shoulders to tense up.

Strings can be controlled in countless ways to extort the music: it could be sideways to ‘bend’ notes up in pitch, ‘hammered on’ to get from one note to another, ‘pulled off’ to get from one note to another, muted to muffle the ringing, slid up or down to get from one note to another, wobbled back and forth to make the note wobble in pitch, a technique called ‘vibrato, slid upon using a metal tube, known as ’slide guitar, or lightly touched at specific points to create ‘harmonics’ and so on. All of these create a player’s unique trademark ’sound‘ that makes us instantly recognize them.

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