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Friday, February 18, 2011

Learn Guitar Scales For Lead Guitar Mastery

By Nick Dillon


It is vitally important to learn guitar scales as it creates a framework for your entire guitar playing, whether it be lead guitar, rhythm guitar or both. Scales are essentially the fundamental building blocks in which music is created. By learning even just a few scales and being able to apply them in a musical context, your skills will grow and you will ultimately become a better guitar player and musician.

Applying certain guitar scales will allow you to portray a sense of mood with your music. Certain guitar scales will also help you zero in on a particular sound or genre of music, and are the backbone to lead guitar and soloing.

When listening to music have you wondered why some songs feel sad and others make you feel bright and happy? Scales ultimately affect the mood in music. The major scale, as an example, will convey a happy feel. In contrast, a minor scale can bring a sad feel to a song. The next time a song makes you feel a certain way, understand that this was most likely intentional, and as a result of the scale chosen.

Lead guitar playing relies heavily upon knowing scales. In order to improvise a guitar solo you must know the key of the music you are playing with and the notes contained within. In order to do this you must know which scale or scale correspond to the backing music. Once you know the appropriate scale and are familiar with the note placements, improvising becomes effortless and more enjoyable.

To learn guitar scales will allow you to fully explore and understand different genres of music that you may be interested in. For example you may love to play the blues. In this case your playing depends upon whether you can apply the most common scales for this genre of music - ie, the minor pentatonic, major pentatonic and blues scales.

Very specialised sounds can only come from using particular scales. As an example, to create a Spanish or flamenco sound, we might use the gypsy scale or phrygian mode. So if you are very focused on, or interested in a certain type of music, you can start by learning only those scales common to that genre. It is not always necessary to learn many different types of scales.

It is important not to think of learning guitar scales as a boring, repetitive and difficult exercise. By learning guitar scales in an actual musical context, the learning process can be fun, exiting and something to actually look forward to. I have been able to learn guitar scales simply by improvising over backing tracks.




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