Tips and Tricks For Learning and Practicing Guitar Scales

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Scales are a fundamental part of music, so learning and practicing them is absolutely vital to becoming a successful guitar player. If you're anything like me when I first started, then you may find the task of learning and practicing scales a little bit on the daunting side. This blog entry will be devoted to offering a few ideas of what you can do to help you master scales. First things first, for those of you who don't know, a scale is a succession of notes arranged in a pattern of whole steps (the distance of two frets on the fretboard) and half steps (the distance of one fret on the fretboard), (eg. major scale : WWH WWWH). By using the notes of a scale you can create an infinite amount of melodies and chords. Alright now that that's taken care of, let's get started!
Learn the Notes on the Fretboard
It's important to know where all of the notes are on the fretboard, especially on the 6th and 5th strings, since the root of most scales start on those strings. There are dozens of ways you could go about doing this. I highly recommend heading on over to Ricci Adams' musictheory.net. If you go to where it says trainers and click down to guitar trainer you'll find a program that will help you to learn your notes. It's a great little program and I have found that it helps immensely. Try to practice learning your notes a little bit every day.
Learn More Than One Scale Form for Each Scale
Being able to play a scale in multiple positions on the fretboard can mean the difference between being a great player and a mediocre one. Learning many different scale forms in different positions will help to open up the fretboard and give you more options and offer more flexibility when soloing.
Learn the Individual Notes That Make Up a Scale
This is a much more effective way of learning scales rather than simply learning the various scale forms. Knowing exactly what notes make up a scale, and knowing what relationship those notes have to the chord they're being played over will give you much more control over what you are playing. This is especially true when improvising. A great way to do this is to take a scale that you're learning and to play it very slowly, ascending and descending, naming each note as you go along. You can also do this by replacing the note names with each note's scale degree (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Then you can start making up little melodies and name the notes (or scale degrees) that you are using.
Get Yourself a Scale Reference Guide
It's always a good idea to have a way of looking up scales, and there are dozens of books out there that do just that. Personally, I use the Incredible Scale Finder, from Hal Leonard. It has over 1300 scales and it's designed so that they are all easy to find. But really any book that lists scales should do.
Make Sure You Practice Using a Metronome
I cannot stress the importance of a metronome enough. Practicing scales and other technique exercises while using a metronome allows you to develop a solid sense of timing and helps you to keep scales at a slow pace until you can are capable of playing faster.
Improvise
Creating improvised solos is a great way to practice scales. Pick a scale and play along with the radio, or your favourite CD. You can also check out jamcenter.com, which is a great site that offers a variety of backing tracks in different keys and styles for you to jam along with.

Michelle is a guitarist from Quebec, Canada. She is currently completing the master certificate program in guitar at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
If you liked this article and would like to read more, then head on over to Michelle's blog, The Guitar Player's Guide.
http://theguitarplayersguide.blogspot.com/

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Learn Guitar Chords, Blues Music and How to Play Acoustic Guitar

Few things are as enjoyable as picking up an acoustic guitar and playing some blues guitar or when you learn new guitar chords that connect with your soul. There is something about the creative process that is restoring and regenerating.
It is remarkable just how many guitar chords there are, and I am only able to play a fraction of them. The fact that there are six strings and some 20 frets to choose from makes for an almost infinite variety of sound and tone.
Not only that, but playing blues guitar has it's own subtle notes that are apart from the conventional scale. Theses blue notes are usually notes that come from bending the strings to adjust the pitch until it gets to the right sound, which is totally up to the player and listener.
To play acoustic guitar you don't need to know all of those chords that are art of the infinite variety, you only need to start with a few. If you can play 3 chords, you can play probably a thousand different songs.
Of course, after a while, you will grow tired of this simple sound, and want to expand you abilities to include some of those so-called fancy chords up the neck. In reality, these are not that complicated, but some people seem to have a kind of mental block about anything beyond the first 3 frets.
It is quite a feeling to discover that the entire fretboard makes perfect sense and is, in fact, mathematical and logical. Once you learn some simple patterns it all begins to make sense. Then you can become confident and experiment with your playing.
The old blues players from the South had very limited means, in fact some had homemade guitars. These instruments were made of cigar boxes and wire for strings. When you see one it becomes apparent why people like Chuck Berry developed the style they are known by.
Many of these old time players had no musical training at all, and they just tuned the guitar in whatever way sounded good. This is why many old blues songs are in open tunings, sometimes very odd tunings. To them it made no difference, it just sounded good, so they went with it.
On the other hand, if you have a good acoustic or electric guitar, it really makes a difference to use good accessories. Your choice of guitar string, for example, makes a big difference. If you use heavy strings it will be hard to play and your fingers will hurt after a short time. Heavy strings have their place, for sure, but for most people it is better to use light gage guitar strings. Even medium strings can be hard to press down and will hurt your fingers.
Electric guitar strings are different though because they do not require much tension to work and sound great. It it much easier to play an electric, but it does not have the sound of an acoustic. An acoustic electric is a sort of hybrid of the two and works quite well, especially when performing.

Randy Hough has a website: http://PlayHotGuitar.com that talks about how to learn guitar chords.
"You know Dad, I've been thinkin', one is a lot more than zero!" my son, Thomas, age 5.

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