7 Things I Learned From Practicing Major Scale (CHANGE YOUR WORLD!)
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.
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.
The first benefit that you’ll discover from practicing the Major scale is a much better recognition for the notes on the neck.
Example 01). The scale tones are connected to our musical keys, so along with learning the notes on the neck you’ll get better at knowing sharps and flats in each of the key signatures.
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.
Example 02). Intervals are a valuable tool to understand as a musician and they are directly tied to scale practice.
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.
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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OCTAVE LEARNING:
Octaves are by far one of the most important ideas that we have as guitar players, and there’s no better way to learn the guitar's octave patterns than by the study of scale layouts.
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.
Scales also help us understand how octave patterns can be mapped between string groups like this next example where we have a 5th to 2nd string octave of “C.” In this case the octave travels toward the guitar’s head-stock.
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!
