Guitar Scales Philosophy
There is a better philosophy to guitar scales than what most guitar teachers will say. The usual route of learning them is to memorize them in shapes on the fretboard. The problem with this approach is that for every new scale you have to learn multiple patterns up and down the fretboard to really be able to play the scale anywhere. At the same time, you usually don’t know what notes you are actually playing with this philosophy, it is all just a visual shape to you.
A better approach is to build scales by interval. If you can understand each interval and put them together one at a time to create whatever scale you want, you have a much more flexible and powerful understanding of the guitar. This method will require you to play and digest things slowly at first, but after a while, all of the intervals become familiar to you, and you can start creating whatever types of guitar scales that you want. It also works the same way for chords and anything else that you play.
Intervals are often ignored by guitar players and teachers. People usually go straight to playing some basic chords and scales, but this is premature if you don’t understand the intervals that make up those chords and scales. Spend some time with the intervals first philosophy and see how it can improve your knowledge of the instrument and music in general. For anyone interested in philosophy in general, there are some great philosophy t shirts at this site by the way.
November 18 2009 05:57 pm | Guitar Scale Charts