Do This EVERY Single Day to Master ANY Scale!
The incredible ability that this exercise has to produce melody and have that melody occur very quickly (and accurately), is unlike anything that guitar players who are unfamiliar with this idea will have ever experienced in the past.
EXERCISE GOALS:
The goal of this exercise is to promote good note choice and to help stop your note stumbles. The work done on this method will quickly start to fade away the poor notes having them to be instead replaced by confidence and strength for finding the best notes in a more balanced manner.
Wrong notes (that came from years of bad training), will start to dissipate, hand mobility will improve, and the strength of mental recall for the best notes will increase for you without needing to change anything else about your scale knowledge.
THE EXERCISE METHOD:
In this lesson I am going to show you ONE scale exercise that will change the way you practice scales forever! Because, it’s so simple you can do it every single day.
The exercise is so effective that it will help you apply any scales’ sound in a way that you can immediately start working with the scale (whatever scale it is), to create; licks, melodies, or riffs… whatever you want to get out of the scale, you’ll be able to do it.
At this point I know you’re probably wondering, what in the world is this scale method. What exercise is this?
To answer that question you'll need to understand that it has to do with using scales along just two strings in a select region of the fingerboard while targeting the sound of the scale’s tonality with a floating background harmony.
Additionally, (and most importantly), we’ll focus on notes that lead us into the color tones of the scale. Now, all this might sound a little complex, but it really isn’t and if you stick with me through this whole lesson, (we’ll only need about 10 min.), you’ll be able to take any scale and apply it musically in record time using this approach. So… let’s get started…
Example 1):
Two String Major Scale Outline…
Here’s our first 2-String Scale. It is a “G Major.” Here’s how it sounds, starting from the root note at the 4th-string fifth fret…
In the video [03:09] I’m sure that the first thing you noticed was how I didn’t play those notes like it was some text book scale exercise, (I played them more like they were a melody), and that’s because when you lay the notes of a scale out across only two guitar strings, you end up with a few duplicate notes… (on the neck diagram, you probably noticed that there were notes which were shown in parenthesis).
Those notes are duplicates of scale tones that exist between two guitar strings. And, along with that idea, I next want to bring in what’s really one of the most important elements of this exercise - which is using specific notes as what we’ll call – the scales; “target tones.” Let me show you exactly how this works on the neck…
Example 2):
Two String Major Scale Outline (with the Target Tone)…
Below is an example of our two string “G” Major scale once again. But now, you’ll notice that the 3rd note (from the root), has been colored “Blue.”
NOTE: When you lean into a color tone, you get a very strong presence of this scales tonality, making it an important note to land on when composing melody lines.
Coming up next, I’m going to cover how to practice creating melody, and targeting the color tones so that your scales start working more musically.
I wanted to take a minute to let you know, that if you want to learn even more about scales and theory I have a great offer for you.
With any donation over $5, or any merchandise purchase from my Tee-Spring store, I’ll send you free copies of THREE of my most popular digital handouts.
One is called, “Harmonized Arpeggio Drills” (it’ll train you on developing your diatonic arpeggios).
Another one is my “Barre Chord” Handout which includes a page showing all the key signatures along with a chord progression that applies barre chords.
Plus, you’ll get my Notation Pack! It has 8 pages of important guitar worksheets for notating anything related to; music charts, guitar chord diagrams, and TAB.
As a BONUS, (from my "Over 40 and Still Can't Play a Scale" video), I'll also throw in a breakdown of all of the chords that are diatonic to the "F Major" scale.
As an EXTRA BONUS for my Phrygian Dominant video, I'll also throw in a breakdown featuring all of the chords that are diatonic to the Phrygian Dominant scale.
Just send me an email off of the contact page of CreativeGuitarStudio.com to let me know about either your donation or your Merchandise purchase and I’ll email you those digital handouts within 24 hrs.
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Example 3):
Practice Routine for Major Scale (with backing chord)…
In developing a practice routine for the two-string scale, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of simply using one chord as a backing harmony. For covering this major tonality sound, here’s a nice 2nd inversion “G Major” chord to try:
You can lay down this chord on a looper pedal (or you can even just use your phone to record it for a minute or two), and - try playing that 2-string scale under it - to work at targeting both into the color tone as well as, try playing into the root note - to work at developing some skill with it.
Here’s an example play through so that you can better understand what I mean.
IMPORTANT:
In the next release of my Donation and Teespring promotional item the Handouts Collection eBook (Vol. 4 release), I’ll have a brand new section in it that’ll be devoted to this videos topic.
That new section will include the diagrams and the instruction for all the Major Scale ideas (that we’ve covered here), PLUS there’s going to be a bonus section that will be devoted to showing how to play through this 2 string - scale practicing routine with the additional coverage of using the Minor Scale!
On top of all that, the Vol. 4 Handouts Collection eBook will contain a new section devoted to the Dorian Mode. The release date of Vol. 4 will be Sept. 05, 2020.
