Oh god what an idiot. Have you ever seen a picture by an artist who doesn't get the perspective right? Rubbish isn't it? Well perspective is to art, what scales are to music. Perspective makes a picture make sense. Scales are the periodic table of music. They make a complex thing simple.
Added to that no teacher or friend had ever explained to me what I'd get out of scales or how much fun it can be.
So, no matter how good you think you sound, or how content you are with your playing, if you haven't got to grips with scales here are 10 good reasons why you should learn them and learn them well.
- You improve your left-hand right-hand picking coordination. Your playing becomes smoother and more fluid. Who doesn't want that?!
- Your left-hand gets stronger and you finally get to use your pinky properly rather than avoiding using it.
- Your picking gets faster and more consistent.
- You get to understand how chords are made and how to build melodies over them.
- Your ear starts to recognise notes so you can copy songs by ear more easily.
- You start to be able to play the notes in your head more quickly rather than spending hours looking for the next note.
- You learn a whole bunch of famous melodies by accident. See, you don't just learn scales up and down in note order - you play them by skipping notes, or playing runs of 3 or 4 notes, or just playing them randomly.
Try this two steps up, one step back pattern: play the root (1st) then note 3 (3rd) then 2nd, 4th, 3rd, 5th, 4th, 6th, 5th, 7th, 6th, 8th.
Doing this type of practice makes famous melodies jump out at you. - You really 'unlock' the neck and get comfortable playing everywhere.
- You learn how songs are constructed out of chord progressions (these are called diatonic if all the chords are from a single scale).
- It stops you from just playing the same old riffs over and over again.
For more on learning scales click here
