In fact, becoming fully aware of everything that scale practice offers us can be boiled down to just seven things. So, in this video, I’m going to show you the "7 things" that every well studied guitar player gets from the practice of scales. 

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In this lesson I’m going to show you seven things that you’ll learn after practicing the major scale. These are seven benefits that happen once you really dig in and start spending a lot of time organizing the notes that we have available from playing scale patterns. 

This is extremely important because once a guitarist starts practicing the Major scale that work will carry over to many other ideas, and scale study is excellent because it helps with not only developing shapes and connecting patterns, but the really cool thing is that it when you study scales you start to also get better in several other areas as well. 

NOTE RECOGNITION:
Let’s get right into this and start off with the first thing that you’ll learn after you begin practicing the Major Scale.

DEGREES /INTERVAL AWARENESS:
Along with the notes of the scales and learning about the key signatures, another excellent by-product of learning scales happens to be learning more about the scale's degrees and their connection to intervals. 

The step-wise order of tones can be seen as a series of numbers and these are the degrees of the scale, and they allow us to think universally about how notes align and how we can extract chords and arpeggios from the scale tones.

Coming up next, I’m going to explain how scale study also helps with octaves, fret-board geometry and unique melodic options… 

But first, I want to tell you about a special promotional offer so you can get a collection of some of the most valuable handouts that I have here at my studio, it’s my; Handouts Collection eBook.

Example 03). Octaves provide a map across the neck for us to understand positions along with learning both vertical as well as, horizontal note pattern alignment. 

We can also use octaves to understand more about the span of the unison tones by mapping the octaves to a different direction of the guitar. In this next example (below) an octave reaches from the 5th-string over to the 3rd-string. 

FINGERBOARD GEOMETRY:
Another cool thing that the study of scales will help with is getting a better understanding of fingerboard geometry. 

Fret-board geometry is the way that a group of notes in one area of the guitar neck can be thought of as existing in other regions of the guitar fingerboard. 

This topic includes two concepts for how notes can exist in the other regions of the guitar fingerboard. They could be seen as either as unison tones, (same notes) or how tones will exist on the neck in another tonal range, (same tonal names, but in a different pitch).

Example 04). If we look at how the geometrical design of the notes of a 5th-string root “C” major scale in 2nd position directly connect to the geometry of the same notes of a 6th-string root “C” Major in 7th position, it becomes obvious that we have identical designs. 

Another topic scales help us with is more melodic options. It’s a big factor for every guitarist who’d like to get better at the way they perform a guitar solo. 

Playing a decent solo requires a guitar player to introduce unique sounds and those often come out of playing unique shapes.

Example 05). This layout (below) is a very popular pattern of the “Major Scale.” The shape itself, is built off of the 5th string root. 

By isolating specific areas of the shape, we can produce options across the sound that can offer - not only a unique geometrical design but also, (this group of isolated tones I’ve highlighted) could be an interesting collection of notes to use within a solo. 

Isolating unique shapes across a scale pattern can in turn offer guitar players a unique sound.

RHYTHM and TIMING:
The next thing that I want to cover is how practicing scales can help you learn a lot more about dealing with rhythm. 

The important thing with rhythm and timing comes down to how scale practice affects your development of a higher level of perfection with the control of Rhythm Duration and of course with how you apply it which directly relates to a guitar players sense of timing.

Example 06). When a student practices developing scales every book and every teacher will stress how important it can be to also develop a sense for playing those scale tones in different duration notes against a metronome. 

Below is a common one octave “C Major” scale pattern. Play this scale pattern first at the duration of eighth-notes and then play it again as 16th notes, (use a metronome). 

TECHNICAL PROFICIENCY:
The final topic has to do with how after you start practicing the major scale you’re going to start to develop an increased sense of “Technical Proficiency,” (or what is often called Left and Right Hand Co-ordination and Control). 

A great technical drill that we can start doing with patterns on the neck is the application of Scale "Sequencing." Try taking the scale degrees of a Major Scale and playing them in the sequence indicated below:

Example 07). "Scale Sequencing" drill.

Guitar technique gets a huge boost from the practice of scales and it’s one of the main reasons that scales are part of the 1st group of things that are studied on most all other instruments; like Piano, along with all of the Brass and Woodwind instruments!

If you are not sure how to transpose, then the lack of this knowledge will hold you back from playing better riffs and better guitar solos. 

And, that's not the worst of it because not knowing how to do this will make you more susceptible to remaining stuck playing your lines in only certain areas of the guitar neck. 

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THE TWO TYPES OF TRANSPOSING:

Type 1). The "Cut and Paste" approach
Here, we change the position placement of what we're playing on the neck. This will keep the geometrical shape, but it will result in changes to the key signature. This approach would be considered as true method of transposing in music.

Type 2). The "Duplicate /Clone" approach
The other approach is the duplication, or "clone" approach. This transposing approach is more of a "guitar neck" oriented idea and it operates by keeping the exact same notes, (the unison tones) but create a "clone" of them by re-locating them to another fret-board region. 

Ideally, you would want to be as fluent as possible in both of these techniques. Sadly, almost half of the players out there do not understand either of them at a high enough level.

WHAT IS TRANSPOSING?
Even if you’re not playing very many gigs right now, there’s something that you, (as a guitar player) should be able to do on your guitar, but sadly only around 50% of players actually know it. This idea is called transposing and it is super valuable!

If you know a scale pattern, (or any melodic pattern) and if you have committed that pattern to memory, the pattern layout should be worked through a procedure that is called being, “Transposed.”

The process of transposing means that we will make a change to the placement, or to the ordering of a part. Traditionally, to transpose a piece of Music, it means to Change the "key" of that piece. 

For example, a piece of music in a major key can be transposed to another major key; or the same thing can happen in a minor key - it can be transposed to any other minor key.

Let’s explore this idea further, because it is without any doubt one of the most significant guitar playing concepts that we need to learn.

THE "CUT and PASTE" METHOD:
We’ll call our first transposing method, “Cut and Paste.” This method is essentially the musical method of, True Transposing. 

The Cut and Paste method changes the position placement, as well as the musical key of a melodic idea. One bonus of this cut and paste method is that it keeps the original ideas shape, so it is very easy to execute on the fingerboard.

Example 1). The scale example below is a popular mid-region along the neck “A Minor” Pentatonic Scale shape.Learn how to play it on your instrument.

Example 2). If we transpose the shape from example one laterally along the neck dropping it down a whole-step it becomes the, “G Minor Pentatonic.” 

Example 3). If we transpose the pattern laterally again - dropping it an additional whole-step down - it becomes the, “F Minor Pentatonic.” 

Coming up next, I’m going to go over another form of transposing that involves note cloning. This idea is really beneficial for when you want to perform a guitar solo. 

But, before we head to that, I want to tell you about a special promotional offer that's related to my new; Handouts Collection eBook. 

NOTE CLONES /DUPLICATION:
The next transposing method is more of a guitar based approach rather than what we’d consider a text-book musical approach and it’s what we’re going to call a “Note Duplication,” (or “Note Cloning”) idea. 

What this method does is it keeps the notes the same, but re-locates them to another fret-board region.

Example 4). [remember our original idea]… It was that, “A Minor Pentatonic,” performed in the middle of the neck, it went like this.

Example 5). If we apply note cloning, the scale layout from example four can function in other areas of the neck as well. Here’s the same scale of, “A Minor Pentatonic,” but this time performed in the upper fingerboard register. 

Example 6).  If we apply another note clone, our scale layout can function in one more area of the neck. Here’s the same scale of, “A Minor Pentatonic,” but this time performed in the lower fingerboard register. 

The "Note Cloning" method can be extremely helpful for playing a riff or a guitar solo, because it offers guitar players a few other options along the fret-board. 

These other options mean that we will never feel compartmentalized into playing our phrases in only one "comfortable" region or neck location. 

In this video I am going to show you just one thing that you could start doing after you play only three notes that will improve your phrasing, the sound of your lines and the expression that comes from each note of your solos and riffs.

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NOTE CHOICE:
Taking a deeper look into note choice and phrasing will also make you think a whole lot more about how rhythm ideas can integrate across the lines that you play so that your phrasing starts to develop more naturally without the imbalances that often occur if you never stop to consider the points I’m about to share with you.

If you’re performing a lot of notes in a riff or in a guitar solo or perhaps if you’re only playing a few notes in a melodic statement - you’re probably not taking stock of other options that can happen after playing a note group of a phrase. 

Depending upon the style of music, normally a “note group” can take on anywhere from 3, to 5, or even 7 notes across a melodic statement. How you think about those phrases, what you do within them and how you play around them can have a serious impact upon the quality of everything else that you perform.

Example 01).
Start by learning the following lead guitar phrase. 

Reference Phrase:

Example 02).
After the first three notes, let’s alter the phrasing of the line so that we accomplish just two things; a new rhythmic feel, and a new technique for use across the part.

Modified Phrase:

In the example above, the new rhythmic idea included tied notes into downbeats and the addition of a 16th-note phrase. All we did for the new technique was I went and added a hammer-on in the first measure. 

What’s really cool is how our idea became a new version of its old self through doing nothing more than a couple of simple modifications to the original melodic statement. The idea is simple, but once it gets applied it really is highly effective. 

Coming up next, I’m going to explain how to expand on this idea even further. But first, I want to tell you about a special promotional offer so you can get a collection of some of the most valuable handouts I have here at my studio, and it’s my studios; Handouts Collection eBook.

ADJUSTING NOTE GROUPS:
Learning to adjust note groups across a riff or a solo is one of the main technical ideas that gets used by the world’s greatest guitar players. Whether that’s Clapton, Hendrix, Satriani, or Stevie Ray, every one of the world’s great guitar players has developed their own “built in mechanism” for how they adjust notes of a riff. 

How guitar players will modify notes across a lead melody line so that the statements they create have a greater impact upon the listener is a vital skill for developing more advanced melodic phrasing. 

I want to begin by helping you to better understand this through showing you a new melodic idea, getting you to learn it and then helping you with ways of starting to make other modifications so that the phrasing of the parts you play will change so they better attract the attention of your listener.

As you can tell in the 2nd measure (of example 04) there was a “Hammer-on /Pull-off” along with a “Slide.” This type of simple modification is often all that’s required to create a more interesting impact on your melodic lines.

CONCLUSION:
Our goal with this modification approach is to accomplish two things; 

(1). a new feel with respect to the rhythmic impression of the part 

(2). and the introduction of a few new phrasing techniques