Electric Guitar Today

Scales are an important part of a guitarists routine. Practicing scales on your guitar not only help you pick up speed but helps you learn the notes of your fret board which is important if you want to solo like crazy. Practicing scales will help your ear recognize popular note combinations.

First lets understand the diagram. We saw that fret boxes are used to display chords now we will use them to display guitar scales.

The strings on the diagram are represented by the vertical lines and the frets are horizontal lines, like if you see your guitar with the headstock pointing upwards.

We don’t always play scales at the first fret so to save some space there is a number to the left to show which fret the scales begins on. No number means first fret of coarse.

It’s important to remember that a scale which does not include any open strings can be moved up or down on the neck. To find a scale all you do is move the root notes (black dots) to the position on the neck that suits your key.

In the examples that we are going the finger number is included to get you to play correctly from the start. When you get better your soloing will be faster with correct finger positioning. Methods and sites don’t always show which finger to use.

How to play a scale

It’s simple if your scale is displayed as a fretbox:

Play the notes on the 6^th string (remember if there is a “0” it means you need to play an open string), then you play the notes on the 5th string and so on.

If your scale is displayed as tabs:

No need to buy scale method books anymore, simply visit Scalerator.com and pick the type of scale you wish to display. You can then print the scales you need, they came with notes and tabs.

6th string open, 6^th string 3^rd fret, 5^th string open, 5^th string 3rd fret, 4th string open, 4^th string second fret…See “Reading Tabs” if you don’t know how to read tabs.

This video will show you how to play a scale.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS