8 Tips To Learn Guitar Scales for Guitar improvisation

by Mike Brown

Scales are an important portion of your creativity, regardless of whichever scales you desire! The more scales you know, the more ways you have of expressing yourself. If you want to take a proved and tested path that will allow you to play the music of many master musicians, I would suggest you learn scales in the following order.

1. Minor Pentatonic. This is the 1st scale and a lot of people learn it. It is easy because it only has 5 notes, and it opens up huge possibilities for improvisation. Some guitar players never require more than this scale.

2. Major pentatonic. This is pretty alike and is a variation of the minor pentatonic.

3. Major Scale. This scale is the base of western music.

4. Natural Minor scale. The major scale and natural minor scale both form the backbone of western music. You can use the pentatonic scale wherever you apply the minor scale because the pentatonic is in reality the minor scale with just a a couple of notes.
With the above collection of scales you can play 95% of music that you are familiar with. If you stop here you can still be a very efficient instrumentalist. The next scales are more particular in their application, but rarer and cooler and will start to hand your music with a more unique and distinctive feel.

5. Harmonic Minor/Melodic Minor. Two variations of the lower-ranking scales that give a different feel, particularly the harmonic minor.

6. The major modes are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. These Modes are built according to particular rules. Depending on your own choice, they will give your music of a peculiar feel. The taking of modes helps you greatly when you are thoroughly experienced with the scales I stated previous.

A lot of people don’t make it past the major modes – by the time you master the major modes and the other scales, you are skillful musician, with a large range of scales and stylings to feed into your musical composition and soloing.

7. Exotic Scales. I call any scale that I haven’t listed above an “exotic scale” – that’s simply my tag for it. There are hundreds of exotic scales, many of them used in specific types of folk music or Jazz. You could spend many years learning them all, and you can find reference books on them such as the Guitar Grimoire.

8. Modes of Exotic scales. Every scale has associated modes; it is not true that modes just exist for major scales. They offer you an even wider palette of tones to choose from.

About the Author:
Find the Key of a Song with Guitar Tabulature

Guitar tabs are an informative guitar- favorable mode of putting riffs down, but they generally are not as much informative as sheet music. Guitar tabs frequently rely on backing tracks with some descriptions and analysis to support them. This is...

?Learning How To Play By Ear – Guitar Lessons

Join us as we take a view what it takes to learn to play the guitar by ear and exceptional practical tips that you can use to better your skills and fine tune your ear....

A Review of Planet of Rock Guitar Backing Tracks

Are you tired of waiting for your band to get it together so you can get some high quality practice sessions? Do you have a burning desire to get so good at your guitar licks that people can\'t wait to...

The acoustic guitar music is magical to play and learn

The popularity of acoustic guitars over electric is largely due to the mystique and romance associated with them. The soft strumming of acoustic guitar can cause people to stop what they are doing and just listen to the beautiful music....

6 Questions You Must Ask Before Buying A Guitar

When the time comes to choosing the proper guitar for you, the most significant point to keep d in mind is what kind of music are you looking at playing?...