Guitar scales? Help!?

Question

Ive been playing about a year and a half. A guy came over who lives in my neighborhood and said he's been playing about that long. He knows all these really cool sounding licks, scales, and harmonics. I don't know any of this stuff. He made me look like a beginner. When I had lessons, he wrote me down scales but I never practiced them. I thought they didn't do m any good. So now, I need to know a few things

1. Why learn scales?

2. When can i start playing those cool licks guitar players play?

3. Where/How can I learn scales?

And anything else would be great! Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

keep jamming with that guy.  scales are just patterns that can be memorize and moved up and down the neck in any key.  there's theory to tell you which scales to play over which chords and then there's your ear.  i like my ear cause it doesn't involve learning theory.  

when you learn the major scale, notice that Gmajor is the same as say B phrygian, a mode of that scale.  that's what helped me be able to connect those scales up and down the neck to really shred.  and i still suck after 8 years of practicing an hour a day.  aim for sextuplets at 80bpm.  

Answer 2

Scales will help you to make up songs and if you practice them u will know what it will sound like before you play them. Google guitar scales online and you should find a bunch of websites. Good Luck

Answer 3

Get a mentor, maybe the guy you are referring to and jam together

Answer 4

You need to learn scales if you're ever going to write your own stuff, or hope to improvise over anything. They'll also give you a great general understanding of music and make the fretboard, chord construction etc. seem a whole lot less daunting.

The 'cool licks' you mention are simply sequences of notes within these scales, making use of things like bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs etc.

And you can learn scales in pretty much any guitar book/website. They're really pretty simple. They'll seem weird at first, but stick with them, you won't regret.

OH and also, there're a tonne of different scales. Start with the minor pentatonic. 99% of solos/licks etc are in this scale. Then blues, and the major pentatonic.

Hope that helps!  

Answer 5

Learn them because you use scales to make up those cool licks your friend knows, and also to simply become more MUSICAL.  Everything we do in music, whether it's guitar or piano or tuba or whatever, is based on scales.  Learning the scales in all the various positions on the neck improve our technique and also heightens our ability to improvise and solo.

Best way to get started, learn the major scale and the minor pentatonic scale in as many positions as you can.  Sing the names of the notes out loud each and every time you play them, while you play them - trust me on that.  :)  

Try playing the scale to a metronome; once you're used to playing to a beat, make it your goal to play sixteenth notes at 80-100 bpm - that should keep you busy for a while.  :)  

Once you've memorized the scale of your choice in each possible position, start playing your scale as SEQUENCES, meaning play the notes in a different order than just "do re mi fa so la ti do."  You can play the scale in "thirds," in "fourths," "fifths," "sixths," etc.  Don't get too hung up on that right now if it sounds confusing, it'll all make sense after a while.  

Read on the sites below for the details on what all this entails - it really is how the pro's do it.    

shredacademy.com

skinnydevil.com (a plug for my teacher's site!)

blackbeltguitar.com

After you've got your major scale covered, in the months to come you can start on melodic minor, harmonic minor, all the modes, etc.  That stuff will all make sense once you've burned-in the major scale though; just work hard on one or just a couple things at a time, pace yourself and don't get overwhelmed.  

You can expect to put together some cool licks of your own after you've memorized your major scale and pentatonic scale patterns and done some practice playing around with them for a while; time frame just depends on how much time you commit to practicing, but I'd give it a few months and just be patient with it.  It takes time.  

Good luck.

Answer 6

start hanging out  with  this guy thats how you learn for free