Beginners Guitar Lessons, Scales – 4 Tips to Get the Most From Your Lead Playing
By Mike P Hayes
guitar scales can be frustrating and confusing for the beginning guitarist. Often the student simply doesn’t know where to start.
How important are scales?
It appears that learning and understanding scales is vital to becoming a better guitarist, how many scales should I learn and which scales should I learn first?
Good questions, the truth is scales re important, they’re like our musical alphabet. The thing to keep in mind is that you only need to know a few scales, guitarists often become obsessed with practicing scales and over their real purpose which is to make music.
Here’s a list to help you choose what scales to practice and eliminate the confusion.
Tip 1 — Select a style
With literally thousands of scales to learn the first thing to do is decide on which style of music you want to play. Certain scales are more applicable to particular types of music e.g., the minor pentatonic scale works well for rock, blues, metal music…mainly songs with power chords.
The blues scale is used mainly for rock, blues, metal music while the major pentatonic scale is mostly used for country, pop, country rock …generally songs with open chords.
Of course, I’m generalizing here, you can use any scale you wish for any style of music, however some scales work better than others. The idea is to use the correct musical alphabet (scale) for the style of music you want to play.
Tip 2 — start on the keynote
Simply running up and down a scale won’t produce any meaningful music no matter how fast you play them. It won’t communicate anything to the listener.
The idea is to train our brain and fingers to make musical decisions, which note do you want to play next? Where is the note I’m hearing in my head is it higher or lower than the previous note?
To get this brain — fingers connection practice starting on the keynote of the scale and decide whether your next note is higher or lower than the keynote.
The keynote is the first note of the scale, e.g., the keynote for the A minor pentatonic scale would be “A”.
Tip 3 — record a background
Once you have decided on a scale to practice, record a background in the key you want to practice. The recording does not have to be elaborate, a simple acoustic guitar will work fine.
Record the backing track for 5 to 10 minutes duration, this will give you plenty of time to practice and try out your ideas.
A good idea is to try and play just one note (the keynote is an idea choice for this), practice all different types of rhythms, slides, bends etc., to see how creative you can be.
Recording a backing track is very helpful as you will find that you react differently to certain chord textures, the same note will sound different when played against a variety of chords.
Tip 4 — learn all keys
Guitarists should practice their favorite scale(s) in all keys, this is especially important when working with singers.
Each key has it’s own personality, certain keys have a warm feeling, while others are bright.
Try playing a “G” minor pentatonic scale over a recorded background in the key of “G”, then, play a “B” minor pentatonic scale over a pre-recorded background in the key of “B”.
Scales can “free your fingers and freeze your brain” the whole idea of scales is to help you play music. Think of music as a language, scales are our musical alphabet, knowing the alphabet is just the beginning, it’s how we use the alphabet to communicate that’s important.
These ideas will help you develop your own style and soon you will be transferring the music you are hearing in your head onto the guitar.
Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at:
=> http://www.guitarcoaching.com
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Guitar Lesson: What Is The Ultimate Way To Practice On Your Guitar?
There are many principles involved in an effective practice session and I think some of these are:
1. A motivation founded on a love and passion for the music you can produce on the guitar.
2. An acceptance of the fact that you must practice on that technical level you have reached.
3. A working knowledge of muscle tensions and how to minimize them when you play and how to work on reducing them when you don’t play.
What shall we do until we find the most effective way to practice on the guitar?
When I was studying music at an academic level I many times had the question messing around in my mind about the ultimate method for practicing on my guitar and other instruments I played.
A well renowned jazz tenor saxophonist who was my teacher in jazz improvisation discussed this issue with me as I asked him and he gave me the most intelligent answer I ever heard before or after. He said with a smile, “until you find out the best way to practice, practice anyway!”
How effective can a practice session be?
My humble opinion after much practicing and playing guitar and piano and other instruments and also teaching piano and guitar is that you have to take many things into consideration like the time available, your motivation level, how concentrated you can expect yourself to be and more.
As real growth often is a slow gradual process you will not very often be able to measure the effectiveness of a practice session by how much you have learnt so you have to find other ways to find out if you are effective.
Can you practice too much or too effectively?
It depends on how we define effective practice sessions. If effective guitar practice is to work through a long list of things to improve in your playing and to practice ten hours a day without interruption I guess you can practice too effectively.
This will mean that you practice in such a way that you will get fed up with guitar playing and maybe you will even hurt your muscles and develop an aversion towards guitar playing for the rest of your life.
What is real effectiveness when you practice on your guitar?
Real effectiveness is better measured by how well your practicing methods and results are pointing towards you goals. Without goals you cannot measure effectiveness. The roads to Anywhere are many so to find out if you are on the right road you have to decide your destination.
If your goal is to have fun with your guitar then you have a very effective practicing session if you have fun with your guitar. If that is what you want then it is a worthy goal. I guess you could come upp with more specific goals with deadlines so you can measure them better. But it is up to you to decide your own goals, otherwise the goals will not be effective.
I hope these words on practicing guitar playing will give you some comfort and also help you realizing that when human beings like you and me are involved we cannot definitely say how we ought to play to be effective.
Human beings are funny things that sometimes behave like as if they were identical, but nevertheless they are unique. This also applies to guitar players like you and me. We are different in many ways but I guess we want our guitar playing to contribute to our happiness and joy so have fun and…”until you find out the best way to practice, practice anyway!”!
Peter Edvinsson is a musician, composer and music teacher. Visit his site Capotasto Music and download your free sheet music and learn to play resources at http://www.capotastomusic.com
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Learn Acoustic Guitar – Movable Chord Shapes Explained
By Dave Long
Movable chords are something that anyone that wants to learn acoustic guitar should become familiar with.
These chords use the same basic shape to make the same chord for any note simply by moving up and down the neck. These chords are sometimes called closed chords (in order to be so easily movable, these chords have no open strings) or barre chords.
E Series Barre Chords
The E series of bar chords all have their root note on the low E string and are based off the E or Em chord formation. Sometimes these are referred to as F bar chords, because the first natural chord with a barre used is the F chords.
Here some examples of E series chords:
E: 0-2-2-1-0-0
F: 1-3-3-2-1-1
G: 3-5-5-4-3-3
Em: 0-2-2-0-0-0
Fm: 1-3-3-1-1-1
Gm: 3-5-5-3-3-3
The pattern of the shape holds true for any position on the fret board, if this shape is used it will form the major or minor version chord of whatever note is on the low E string.
The chord is formed by “barring” all six strings with the index finger. At first, this can be difficult, but with time and practice it will become easier. The remaining notes of the chord are fretted using the remaining fingers. Since the one difference between the major and minor versions is the middle finger being lowered or raised, it makes changing between chords as simple as moving up and down the fretboard and raising and lowering the middle finger. Take some open chord progressions and try playing them with E bar chords.
A Series Barre Chords
The A series of barre chords (sometimes referred to as B series chords) is similar to the E series, except the bar chords are based off of the A or Am chords.
The root note of the chord is the note being played on the fifth string and the low E string is usually not played. This is not a hard and fast rule because extending the bar adds a fifth note, which can be added to the major or minor chord, but it is not actually required.
Below are some examples of A series chords.
A: X-0-2-2-2-0 or X-0-2-2-2-X
B: X-2-4-4-4-2 or X-2-4-4-4-X
C: X-3-5-5-5-3 or X-3-5-5-5-X
Am: X-0-2-2-1-0
Bm: X-2-4-4-3-2
Cm: X-3-5-5-4-3
One thing that is apparent is there are two versions of the major chord commonly used. Many guitarists will simply use the ring finger to bar the higher strings and not play the high e string rather than trying to hold the chord in other ways. This is because that way of holding the chord is easier to move in and out of and higher up the neck, it can be extremely difficult to hold the chord in other manners, as the frets get closer together.
The minor version of the chord, on the other hand, is quite easy to move up and down the neck in the basic form.
The movable chords are an important part of the repertoire of someone that wishes to learn acoustic guitar. Some guitarists will use them almost exclusively because they prefer the sound or ease of usage of them.
Beyond that, some chords have no open chord variants and can only be played with movable chords. If a progression has an unusual chord like Ebm, this is the only way to even be able to play the chord in standard tuning.
Learn more acoustic guitar tips: Learning Acoustic Guitar
Dave Long is the owner of http://www.LearningAcousticGuitar.net where he provides acoustic guitar tips and advice.
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