Electric Guitar Scales Practice

[Jan Dominquez]

Guitar scales are organized sequences of notes played in an ascending or descending order that help you build finger strength and dexterity. Practicing guitar scales also makes you more familiar with the notes on your fretboard, develops your musical ear, and provides a framework for creating melodies for your own original songs.

For those that want to expand their scale horizons, the available Player Pack on the Fender Tune app features a dynamic scale library with a variety of diagrams and patterns for any variation, flavor, and key. And for those looking to brush up on the basics or just dive into scales for the first time, Fender Play has a wealth of videos that offer step-by-step guides of basic scales that will serve you well.

The E minor pentatonic scale in the open position is ground zero for soloing. Led Zeppelin's "How Many More Times," "Back in Black" by AC/DC and "Rumble" by Link Wray are a few popular songs that feature this scale.

The E minor pentatonic scale only contains five notes instead of the standard eight (octave) notes found in all major or minor scales. Rather, pentatonic scales are abbreviated scales that follow a certain pattern, taking five notes from the corresponding octave-based scale, removing three of those eight notes. (More on that later in this article!)

In this Technique of the Week, Leah Wellbaum (Slothrust) teaches the E Minor Pentatonic using the open strings, hammer ons and pull offs. Wellbaum also plays portions of the scale under chords which is a common technique used in her songs.

Some common songs that utilize the A minor pentatonic scale are "Stairway to Heaven" from Led Zeppelin and "Hoodoo Bluesman" by Junior Wells, to name a few. Learn to play the A minor pentatonic scale.

Learning the C major scale will help you understand the key of C, and because it doesn't have any sharps or flats, it's a great entryway into musical composition. To simply play it all on the B string, you'll need to follow a whole step / whole step / half step / whole step / whole step / whole step / half step formula. You can actually play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" using this method!

The E harmonic minor scale is used often in classical, jazz, and metal music, as it can spice up your solos. One way to get to know the E harmonic minor scale is to play it all on the High E string, going from the open position to the second fret (whole step), second to third fret (half step), third to fifth fret (whole step), fifth to seventh fret (whole step), seventh to eighth fret (half step), eighth to 11th fret (minor third), and 11th to the 12th fret (half step).

You can apply this formula starting with any root note to play a major scale in any key. You can hear major scales across every genre and a nearly endless amount of songs. Its bright, upbeat tone makes it ideal for danceable pop songs, rock stadium anthems, and more.

I am trying to learn playing guitar (electric in my case) and I got to the point where I can play minor pentatonic, blues scale, ionian (C Major), dorian and aeolian. Those are the usual ones I try to use just going up and down the scale linking the roots along the fretboard for different shapes and play along online backtracks.I am not crazily fast and I just try to stick with the rhythm. I learnt to bend, pull, hammering, etc, but I feel stuck now. I am not sure what to do next. I like mostly rock and metal (some pop and blues too). I admire heavy metal guitarist shredding and doing crazy things but in my situation what would be a next natural step to suggest?

Do you just "go up and down the scale" w/o any musical context? Learning scales first, and that's what it seems like you are saying, probably isn't necessary. A better approach would be to learn some songs that you like that are not too difficult. That will give the scales context. Musical patterns are more conducive to learning than straight scale exercises.

For example in the key of C maj the D dorian mode is just the same scale starting on the second degree. It fits over the D-7 chord. Even though this information is more used by jazz musicians rock musicians use these chords and modes too.

You want to learn the basic ways to play each chord, not just power chords. To this end there are 5 basic chord forms that look like the 5 open string chords C, A, G, E, and D, and is sometimes called the CAGED method. While a lot of players think it's out of fashion I think it is very useful and I'm glad I know it. You can find the chord forms in any beginner book.

As for shredding, you need way more than just scales, you need focused training on your left and right hand skills. You need to look at body mechanics to shred. To that end learning sequencing patterns on the scales you already know and learning to play them in multiple ways is key to shredding. Also, learning arpeggio patterns and techniques like sweeping and consecutive picking.

Guitars are one of very few instruments which can be used for ingle note playing and chords. So make yourself familiar with chords. Major, minor, dominant 7, major and minor 7, will see you through most pop type songs.

In this band, there may be another guitarist, with whom you ought to share playing. Some lead, some rhythm. The rhythm will probably need some work: playing by yourself means not having to keep good time, and stopping when you've done something odd. With others playing, it's a different scenario.

Learning all the scales is fine (don't forget major pent and blues!) but that's only the alphabet. Tunes use scale notes, sure enough, but now you need to work out how to use those notes in any other than ascending/descending orders, to make tunes, and play some of those notes with some chords, and others with others. Good luck!

If you can play scales, that's not much. Think of it this way: a keyboard player gets the scales of the white keys as given. They also get the pentatonic scales of the black keys as given. Hit only white keys, or only black keys ... good music? Scales are just a frame of reference to build actual music on. For some reason, guitarists think that they have achieved something if they can play a scale. I don't think keyboard players consider it much of an achievement if they can refrain from touching black keys. ;) (partly joking of course)

So, what to do now? Raise your perspective and start operating in the domain of musical ideas, instead of instrument-specific technicalities. Melodies, rhythms, harmony progressions, songs. What kinds of songs do you want to play? Which musical role would you like to do next? Rhythm and accompaniment? Lead lines? Can you play melodies by ear? Can you accompany songs with chords? Do you have a feel for what individual notes do in chords, and how they change the mood?

Pick a song you like and learn to play it on guitar by ear. A looper pedal might be a nice thing to have for practicing, so you can accompany yourself and feel how the different musical roles interact.

For context, I am playing electric guitar. The genre I want to master first is metal. With this, I am not sure which scale I should learn first, the minor pentatonic scale or the natural minor scale. Guidance on this question would help as well. Thanks.

Ignore anyone who tries to shame or diminish whatever kind of notation or marks you use to learn, perform, or compose music. All these systems exist for various good reasons and working professionals do whatever it takes to make sure the show goes on and goes well.

It really depends on what you mean by "recognize". If you extensively practice scales, your fingers will be used to moving in certain patterns (yes, it's obviously not the fingers but the motor control that is involved here, but the meanin should be clear). In combination with your hearing and tab reading skills, this will progress to fluid playing, with the notes mainly falling in places you are musically anticipating. That is some kind of recognition.

If your primary focus is on analysis, being able to sight-discern harmonic frames, voice-leading, and improvise alternate lines and patterns outside of the given score, the visuals of a regular score tend to facilitate a more direct grasp of the musical framework you are moving in. It functions better as a conveyance of musical concepts than a tab, a tool primarily intended for conveying motoric patterns rather than musical content.

There is a reason that tabs (not just for stringed instruments) have started falling out of favor for professional musicians sometime since the late Baroque period, possibly partly driven by ongoing evolvement of instruments and tunings that made for more of a nuisance adapting tabs rather than note-based scores. The additional considerable learning effort required for a fluid interpretation particularly of polyphonic note scores over their tab equivalents tends to deliver returns regarding the bars for expanding on musical content.

With regard to how recognition of scales in tabs vs notes will affect your playing abilities, I consider it likely that you are overthinking this. Unless you have additional affinities to note scores by playing other instruments or singing, I doubt that at the mere scale level you'll experience persisting limitations of either notation.

In the end, the main improvement to playing scales is to be expected from practising playing scales and in that way cementing the connection with what your fingers are doing and what you are expecting to hear.

I believe that those who read tab do so a note at a time, in ignorance (that's not knowing) what they're actually playing. Sequentially, note by note, with little or no regard to what those notes actually are, just where they live.

A pentatonic scale is a scale that has 5 notes per octave. The minor pentatonic scale is typically the first scale guitarists learn to solo with and is very commonly used to form solos in rock, blues, and other popular styles.

As the name suggests, the scale is used heavily in blues but is also used in rock and jazz based styles a lot too. Soloing over the blues using this scale is relatively easy to get the basics of, but you could spend a life time honing the subtle nuances of the style, such as the feel of the bends, the vibratos and the timing of your phrases.

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