Beginners Guitar Lessons, Scales – 4 Tips to Get the Most From Your Lead Playing
October 22, 2008 by rserpe
Filed under Advanced Acoustic Guitar, Learn to Play Lead Guitar
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
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_P_Hayes
http://EzineArticles.com/?Beginners-Guitar-Lessons,-Scales—4-Tips-to-Get-the-Most-From-Your-Lead-Playing&id=1429636
Guitar lesson: Do You Have To Set Goals?
May 22, 2007 by rserpe
Filed under Beginner Acoustic Guitar
By Peter Edvinsson
guitar playing. Let’s see if you can play guitar without goals!
I would like to share some memories with you…
Way back in the late 80’s I started to become very interested in computers. Well, not really in the computers but in the things I believed a computer could help me with.
I compose a lot of music and had used ink and paper so far. Mozart used this equipment so it surely is effective in the hands of the right person.
I used my pens and wrote my music sheets with concentrated efforts trying not to make mistakes. The problem was that it was difficult to change things in my compositions. I often changed things then and still do today.
It was quite difficult to use the notation programs back then. I used DOS on my computers and had to peruse the notation program manuals.
However, I had a goal in the back of my head.
To tame the computer to help me in my endeavors to create sheet music!
Let’s stop for a second and go to your guitar playing. What about your goals? Do you have any? In many guitar articles you can read about the importance of setting goals as you try to progress as a guitar player.
Well, there are many advantages with setting goals. Let’s take a look at some of them:
1. As you write down a long term goal you give yourself a chance to meditate upon why you are playing guitar. Is it to impress your friends? Is it because you like to play? Is it because you want to find a profession as a guitar player? Is your desire to play guitar so strong that you think it is worth to take the time and effort required?
In the goal setting process you will have time to think the whole thing over and maybe turn the whole thing off!
2. Writing down a long term goal and splitting it up in smaller manageable chunks is a good way to use your free agency instead of letting circumstances dictate what will happen with your guitar playing.
3. When you have clear goals and also smaller intermediate goals it is easier to measure your progress and feel the satisfaction that you are on your way and to the right place.
But what if you don’t want to have goals? You just want to play!
Let’s go back to the previous story..
Somehow things have turned out quite nice as far as my more or less subconscious goal is concerned. I do write my music with the help of computers nowadays and can change my music as much as I want. I can change keys, melodies, lyrics and feel good about it. I am where I wanted to be back in the 80’s.
Was this a goal of mine?
Some people define goals as something you have written down on paper with clear deadlines and clearly defined and measureable intermediate goals along the way.
Before we discuss if we need goals or not we have to define what we mean. Is a wish a goal? Is a strong desire a goal?
Let’s continue with the story..
There are people using computers the opposite way from what I do. I have friends who have been deeply interested in working with computers and have seemingly aimlessly installed computer programs, messed around with the Windows directory, changed OS, changed hardware, run into trouble, trying to solve the problems and so on.
My friends have sometimes been of great help when I myself have run into trouble with my computers because they have learned a lot about computers by the previosly mentioned activities and accompanying mistakes.
Did the have goals?
In a broad sense we could say that their goals were to have fun with computers. I guess they haven’t expressed it that way but we could say that they reached their goal.
Let us take a look at you!
If you don’t wish to have written down goals is of course completely up to you. You can have fun just sitting down strumming some chords on your guitar sometimes.
The important thing to think about is this:
Whatever you do with your guitar will lead you somewhere sooner or later. Whatever road you take will take you to a place if you don’t change direction. Do you want to come to this place or not? If not, let me suggest that you change road!
Thirty years from now do you want to be a guitar player that is only able to play a few chords and that is not able to play a song on your guitar? We can say that this is the goal you will reach if you are an “occasional strummer”.
If this is okay with you you can relax and continue playing this way. If you want to be another type of guitar player I guess you have to think about goal setting a little bit more consciously!
Peter Edvinsson invites you to download your free sheet music, guitar tabs, ebooks, music lessons and read his music blog at http://www.capotastomusic.com
