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Thread: learning scales

  1. #1
    Forum Member goofballone's Avatar
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    learning scales

    Its time to put down the tools, stop working on guitars and learn some scales. I'm thinking of the Pentatonic Blues scale, but dont know how to decide witch root note to chose. Or I should say to start with.
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  2. #2
    Forum Member melody's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Its the first note... Add some slurs to the blue notes and your off and running...

  3. #3
    Forum Member Custom 5's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Have you ever attended a music class? Or seen the movie The Sound of Music?

    do re mi fa so la ti do - is a real good starting point. It's the major scale and it's kinda like the starting point of music.

    if you start out learning a blues or rock scale you might learn how to play along some guitar solos and stuff but when it comes time to learn why you play certain notes along with certain chords you will be severely crippled. you can learn the major scale first and then learn how the blues-rock scale came from it. save yourself a few years learning down the road. your choice.

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    Forum Member clayville's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Um, as long as you're in the right key you don't really have to start with the root note. Classic "blues box" scales and patterns all work the same way across the neck (and linearly up the neck) once you know what fret to start on.

    Hearing/finding what key the music is in is, err, the "key". It tells you what fret/where to position the box... but again you don't necessarily have to start with the root note.

    For learning bluesy pentatonics and their relationship to the underlying chords you might get started by working with songs where the key is known already, getting a feel for how the scales work in that key, where they fall on the neck.

    You could do worse than to woodshed some of this stuff (and the other resources on the site). Many of the songs will be (or should be) familiar:
    http://12bar.de/soloscal.php

    Feel... is everything. Take it slow.

  5. #5
    Forum Member thegeezer's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Stevie snacks and others on youtube are free, just don't order their DVD. What they show you are essential licks in the blues.

  6. #6
    Forum Member Offshore Angler's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Honestly, there is only one scale. The chromatic scale. Anything else is just subset of it. I quit playing piano along time ago. I was given a piano a short while back, and when I started playing again, I realized how we guitar players are so hung up on patterns, scales and modes. Part of it is because the scales are linear on a keyboard, and in two dimensions on a guitar neck. Most guitar players never bother to learn all the notes at every string and fret. When I played trumpet as well, that was a more linear note configuration also.

    Much of the fascination with the pentatonic scales with guitar is that once you learn barre chords, the notes for the scale are right there under your fingers. It's too easy to get lulled into "wank mode" because once you are doing the barre chords/pentatonic dealio you really don't need to think to have a solo come out in the right key.

    In reality, you can memorize all the scales in the world, but without knowing the underlying theory they are nothing more than musical trivia. Furthermore, if you understand the theory then you'll never really have to memorize any scales. You'll derive them as you play, which is a hell of a lot easier once you get the hang of it.

    One of the big "tells" of a musician is a pitch like G#/Ab. If someone tells you they are the same note (they are not!) then you can rest fairly well assured that that person has a limited understanding of theory. If they tell you they are the same pitch but different notes then you might want to pay attention.

    Scales are not about knowing which notes to play, they are all about knowing the intervals to play.

    If you are into muscle memory and patterns on the neck, you really only need to know about 4 pattens and then you can apply them modally to have an almost infinite pallette to paint from in any key.

    But- that requires about an hour's worth of theory to understand and even though that's all it takes, most guitar players would rather spend more time defending their position that they don't need theory then they would need to invest to understand it!

    If anybody tells you know and applying theory will hamper your playing - and somebody will, ignore them.

    About notes. Don't get too hung up on them. Use your ears and think in terms of pitches instead. Notes are devices used in musical grammar - hence we call it "notation". But they only a way of telling the musician what pitch we want to play. A note is a rather fascinating human invention. It's the representation of a sound on paper. But it is that sound that matters.
    "No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim

  7. #7
    Forum Member thegeezer's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    The Hal Leonard series stress linear playing.

  8. #8
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    Re: learning scales

    I will admit that I am still on the long road of learning music theory and playing the guitar, but as a self taught player, I also know how difficult it is to just jump into learning scales. Its can be hard for a self taught player to understand the language that a classically trained musician speaks because we learn the guitar from things like tab.

    The two pieces of advice I would give is learn the Major scale first. I think it really helps develop your ear, once you learn to hear the Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do, you find the notes anywhere on the neck. You really don't need a book to find all the positions of the Major scale, just listen! The other major advantage is learning the major scale makes understanding chord names and other notation much easier because you will know what flattened or sharp 5th means.

    The blues pentatonic is not as intuitive "to hear" as the Major scale because the major scale's "sound" is just so familiar. Initially, it is much easier to improvise solo's in the blues pentatonic because there are less notes, and the vast majority of Rock songs are variations of a 12 bar blues progression, but you will soon find out that you can solo over any blues progression in the relative major position just as well as the minor pentatonic.

    As to your question of "What root note should I start on?" I think it "technically" does not matter because the best part of the guitar is that all of the scale patterns are the same. However, most books I have read usually start on the G (3 rd Fret). So if you learn G blues pentatonic you will know that scale in every other key.

    My second piece of advice is like others have said Take it Slow.... Don't try to memorize every position in the scale! Actually learn and listen so that you won't just have to memorize.

    Oh yeah, ask a million questions and learn as much as you can when you are around another kind musician because you can always learn something from someone.

  9. #9
    Forum Member Mesotech's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    I also would focus on the Major scale first and foremost. The Pentatonic is the same thing, minus three notes (but knowing those missing three notes comes in real handy later on in the Pentatonic game because they allow you to switch from Major and Minor Pentatonic fluidly to add flavor to the solos you pull off).

    Next bit of advice on the Minor Pentatonic is learn one "box" at a time in one key. Take a 1-4-5 backing track in that key and play a solo over it in that one box until your fingers know it instinctively, THEN move to a new box shape and do it all over again. Do this until you know all of the box patterns. Once that is done, then begin moving between those same box patterns over the same backing track. You will begin to take note that some "licks" are easier to pull off in one box than they are in another box even though you're hitting the same notes. You fingers will begin to find lick patterns on their own because they'll feel instinctive.

    Once you get that accomplished, then learn the Major Pentatonic scale positions (hint, they are exactly the same as the Minor Pentatonic - just shifted down three frets. F# minor pentatonic is the A major pentatonic scale).

    After that, begin figuring out how and when to switch between the major and minor pentatonic scales in that same backing track.
    POO DAT!!!

  10. #10
    Forum Member pauln's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    One note per string = a chord
    Two notes per string = pentatonic patterns
    Three notes per string = scales

    If you force yourself to select a third note so as to play three notes per string, your pentatonics will become scales!
    When you learn to pick the right third note for the underlying chord, you will really be on your way to learning how to use the scales.
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  11. #11
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    Re: learning scales

    Three notes per string makes a pentatonic pattern into a scale? That's a new one on me. Does that mean if I play:
    G B C on the low E & then
    D F G on the A & then it's no longer a minor pentatonic scale?
    God bless the Internet

  12. #12
    Forum Member Gris's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    Scales, modes, patterns, keys whatever you want to call them; you really only need to learn two or three to get going. There is a simple 'secret' known to elec guitar players. It is that the Ionian (doe-ray-me/major scale) mode or pattern is the same as the Mixolydian, only shifted for key. E.g., C 'major' (do-ray-me) is G Mixo. And, that the same pattern repeats itself in the natural minor mode (our C 'major' becomes A minor). Learn 'one' 'scale' and you really learned three modes. I rarely solo in the 'blues scale' mode. I tend to play either Mixo or Major Pentatonic for major sounding tunes and minor on those. I am not an 'accomplished' guitarist so I don't use diminished, etc., unless it is a constructed solo. So, learn the Ionian/Mixo/Minor scale and the Penta Major and you'll be able to hang in. Then, what I would advise you to try after that is to forget your scale/mode mindset and try playing some over chord patterns... ;-)

  13. #13
    Forum Member pauln's Avatar
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    Re: learning scales

    71818, what I mean is that all the usual pentatonic finger position patterns are comprised of playing two notes per string, not that any two notes per string pattern is pentatonic.

    Likewise, the usual scale finger position patterns are done with three notes per string. I'm just suggesting that converting pents to scales may be done by finding the "missing" third note per string. Since one has a choice of what that third note will be, it helps one's ear decide which of the resulting scales will best work with the harmony.

    It also helps develop the change to using all four fingers instead of three like many pent players do.
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