Thomas J. West Music

Learning the guitar scales is very important for any aspiring guitarist especially if you want to play lead guitar or you want to play your solo. But like anyone who has mastered the scales would tell you, it is the most boring part of the learning - if not boring definitely frustrating. Let me tell you why it is so important to learn guitar scales.

If you are planning to play lead guitar or if you are interested in improving your solo learning the guitar scales is of utmost importance. You start with knowing notes that are contained in the backing tracks. Once you know this you will then need to fit the scales in the piece of music so that it all sounds in harmony. Knowing the scales is important as if you do not know the scales you will not be able to know which scale fits the notes played in the backing track and you will end up spending a lot of time doing trial and errors. Thus you can focus on expressing yourself through the music rather than thinking about the notes. This will help you to play effortlessly and unlock your creativity and you will never hit the wrong note. Hence it is very important for you to have the entire scales framework in your mind. This will only help you to improve your guitar solo skills and make you a confident player.

Learning guitar scales is the only way to improve your knowledge of the melody you can get from your guitar. It will help you to develop better control of your left and right hands, such that they move and play in harmony. By practicing the scales regularly you will start becoming aware of the way your guitar strings are tuned and would expose you to factors such as the power and fortitude of your guitar. If you want to play naturally without thinking mastering guitar scales is the only option you have.

Finally by mastering guitar scales you will be able to expose yourself to different genres of guitar like blues, country, neoclassical metal, rock, acoustic, classical, Spanish, flamenco or electric. It might sound a bit over the board, but most of the guitar genres have common pentatonic scales, which are slightly modified. So if you are playing blues guitar you just need to add a flatted third or flatted fifth or sharp fourth to your basic pentatonic scale and you can play the blues. Hence knowing your scales will allow you the possibility to select the genre you most admire and easily pick up the notes and scales of that genre. Hence learning guitar scales needs to be your first and most important step - the music sense and flow will follow.