Monday 7 March 2011

Learn Guitar Scales For Lead Guitar Mastery

By Nick Dillon


To learn guitar scales is an invaluable asset for any lead or rhythm guitarist. Scales provide the basic building blocks in which music is constructed. As a guitarist, understanding and applying a few basic scales can allow enormous growth as a musician.

Learning guitar scales and applying them is important to create a sense of mood with your music. Scales will also be very important in the context of any lead guitar playing, as they are the backbone to guitar solos. They will also define the genre and sound that you are looking to create.

Have you noticed how some music makes you feel bright and happy and other songs may make you feel sad or blue? Scales affect the mood in music. For example sad songs may use the minor scale to create the feeling of sadness. In the same way, to create a bright and happy feeling to a piece of music, the major scale would often be used. When creating or listening to music, it is important to understand that the notes contained in the piece come from a certain scales or scales and this will influence the mood of the music.

To know and learn guitar scales is especially important in lead guitar. For example if you're interested in improvising a guitar solo, you must know which notes are contained in the musical backing piece and the key that the piece is in. By knowing the scale that fits the piece of music, this allows you not to think so much about what notes work, but more importantly, how to express yourself by using the notes that you know fit perfectly. By having a framework in your head of what notes are available to you when improvising a guitar solo - you can create a better solo in much less time and never hit a wrong note. By knowing the appropriate scales, this will make your playing effortless and unlock your creativity.

Different genres of music each have an individual sound and corresponding scale or scales. A good example is the blues, which relies upon many scales, in particular the blues and pentatonic 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.

When learning guitar scales it is important not to view the learning process as a boring and difficult exercise. To learn guitar scales in a musical context, for example with a backing track, the learning process can be fun and often creative. You don't have to learn scales in a boring repetitive, robotic manner!




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