Do you encourage or go against guitar scales? everyone tells me something different?

Question

All the smart people use scales but when I use them they are very boring and annoying. I suck at learning which notes are in the scale and organizing them into little boxes and switching through them to improvise . And also Slash i dont think used scales. Hes my idol and all he did was sit there jamming to aerosmith records. Some people say its immpossible to learn guitar without scales and others say you dont really need them you just have to find which notes sound good. What do you say?

Answer 1

Definitely learn scales, but you don't have to learn every single one of them.  I think the best thing to do is learn the CAGED system.  It's only 5 chords, and the 5 pentatonic scales (one for each of the 5 chord forms).  It's a little hard to explain in words, you'd be better off doing a Google search to get some diagrams, but here's a quick summary.

You start with a C chord on the 0-3 frets. The next C chord is in the shape of A on frets 3-5. The next C chord is in the shape of G (and keep going, it spells out the word CAGED).  You can start with G, and the next G is in the shape of E, next shape is D.  Get the picture?  And each shape has a pentatonic scale that 'lays' over it.

If you don't mind spending a few bucks, you can buy a CD-ROM called "CAGED Cracked" at truefire.com  It explains the whole system very well (it also covers the EDCAG system, which is the same concept but for minor chords).  There are a few sample videos to watch at the website if you want to check it out first.

Or if you don't want to buy the CD, I can scan the diagrams that came with it and email them.