What Guitar Scales Should You Study?
By Mike P Hayes
guitar scales should you study? If you are new to the guitar, and new to music, you are probably not even quite sure exactly what a scale actually is, which certainly adds to the aura of mystery that begins to surround the subject.
Learning and practicing scales can become an obsession for many guitarists. Scales can “free your fingers and freeze your brain”, if you’re not careful. Always keep in mind that scales are part of the preparation work we do so we will be free to express ourselves musically.
Scales are to the musician what skipping a rope is to a boxer, it’s part of the preparation work. Scales are simply a means to an end. What guitar scales should you study depends on the type of music you want to play. It’s far better to master a small number of scales and be able to apply these scales to many musical settings.
The first thing to understand is that there are hundreds of scales, to give you an idea of what you’re up against, here’s a short sample of some of the names of scales starting with the letter “L”. Leading Whole Tone Locrian Locrian #2 Locrian b4 Locrian Flat 4 Locrian Minor Locrian natural 2 Locrian Natural 2nd Locrian Sharp 2nd Lydian Lydian 7b Lydian Augmented Lydian b7 Lydian contracted Lydian diminished Lydian Diminished 1 Lydian Diminished 2 Lydian Dominant Lydian dominant scale4 Lydian Minor Lydian Sharp 2nd Keep in mind, this is only a sample from a very long list of scales. Each one of these scales can be played in 12 different keys as guitarists we have the added issue of multiple fingering options on the guitar fretboard.
What guitar scales should we study is a very important question, to be honest five minutes thought deciding what to practice is much better that five hours of haphazard practice. Scales are the building blocks from which all music is created. we use scales to create melodies (horizontal structures), chords (vertical structures), arpeggios (oblique structures). Scales in themselves are not music they are simply our musical alphabet. In the hands of a skilled musician they can create music.
Three things to consider when learning scales: (a) there’s the intellectual aspect, data memory information i.e., the names of the notes and their scale step numbers. (b) applying this knowledge to the guitar, in order to do this successfully we need to be able to identify all the notes on the fingerboard by name, not simply by a fingering pattern. (c) motor skill training i.e., speed is a byproduct of accuracy, with the right amount of accurate repetitions, scales will be stored in the brain as a reflex function, training very slowly to avoid mistakes.
Where to start: The first scale guitar players should study would be the minor pentatonic scale. the minor pentatonic scale is a five note scale, (penta = five) found throughout the world. Example of the minor pentatonic scale in the key of A would be: A – C – D – E – G The second scale guitar players should study would be the blues scale. the blues scale is one of the most frequently used scales. It is also important because it is the first real scale of American origin. The blues scale is a six note scale, one way of thinking of this scale would be to treat the blues scale as a minor pentatonic scale with a flattened 5th.
Example of the Blues scale in the key of A would be: A – C – D – Eb – E – G The third scale guitar players should study would be the major pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic scale is another five note scale. Example of the major pentatonic scale in the key of A would be: A – B – C# – E – F# It is thought that the pentatonic scales represent early stages of musical development, because it is found, in different forms, in most of the world’s music.
These two pentatonic scales together with the blues scale are used to create riffs, licks and solos on many popular recordings. What guitar scales should you study is an important question, you can save a lot of time by learning these three scales first. Good luck finding which scales that are right for your music.
Mike Hayes is a teacher, author, speaker and consultant. Get his tips and tested strategies proven to boost your guitar playing his membership site at http://www.guitarcoaching.com today. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_P_Hayes http://EzineArticles.com/?What-Guitar-Scales-Should-You-Study?&id=729296
Easy Guitar Chords For Beginners – Point a Finger and Play Guitar
Which beginners guitar chords are easiest to play?
guitar chords for a beginner guitarist to play are the ones that only use one finger. There are some guitarists who like to tune their guitar differently so that there are many more easy to play chords, but it is a good idea to rather use the standard guitar tuning and first master your guitar chords that way.
Here are the simplest chords you can play on a guitar with standard tuning.
The G chord – one finger version.
Place your third finger behind the third fret, on the first string of the guitar, and strum the first four strings. That’s a simplified G chord.
Okay, I see I’m going to have to explain a few basics on the guitar. Firstly, the strings on a guitar are numbered one to six, and the first string is the thinnest string and has the highest pitch.
I sometimes catch myself getting this wrong, and assuming that the thickest string is the first one. It’s a natural mistake.
The second thing is the finger numbering, which is quite logical, seeing as your index finger is the first finger, seeing as that’s the one you point with.
The second, third and fourth finger are the rest in logical sequence.
Frets are the metal bars in the fretboard behind which you place your fingers. The frets are numbered from the nut, so the nut of the guitar is basically zero. A long time ago, some guitars had a nut, and then immediately after there was a zero fret that the strings rested on.
Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea.
For this version of the G chord, the reason why I chose to use the third finger is because later, when you play the full G chord, your first and second fingers get used.
If you place your first finger on the first fret of the first string, and play the first four strings, you’ve got a G7 chord.
The simplified C chord on guitar.
For this chord you place your first finger on the second string behind the first fret. Here you only strum the first three strings.
So far, those are the simplest guitar chords I can come up with using standard tuning on the guitar. For small children just getting the hang of playing the guitar, these are an easy starting point.
The C and G guitar chords go very well together, but are only suited to a two chord song on the guitar. It’s a bit limiting. To really learn to play the guitar, a beginner would have to start with the open chords, which are still fairly easy to play.
Open chords are called open because they are all played within the first three fret spaces of the guitar, and use some notes from the open unfretted strings.
The open chords you’ll begin with.
The most common guitar chords for beginners are the major and minor open chords. For the major chords there is A, C, D, E and G.
For the minor guitar chords you’ve got A min (min is the chord suffix for minor) then D min and E min. This is a lot better than the one finger chords, but as you can see from the list, there is a lot more needed to be able to play any song you want.
On the positive side, the open chords are the building blocks for more complex and difficult chords on the guitar, and even though there are some chords missing, by changing the key of some songs, you could easily build a fairly large repertoire of songs to play with open chords.
Andrew Webber is a professional guitarist who’s website play-electric-guitar.net has enough Free guitar lessons to get you started on the guitar, not least of which is his page on Open guitar chords.
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