Hey, how are you doing? Justin back with you.
Now, we're going to check out the C major scale in open position.
Now, there are a whole bunch of reasons that we're learning the C major scale.
It's a great fun thing to improvise with. So learning about how chords
and scales fit together, which we are going to talk a little bit about later,
means that you can improvise, make up your own melodies, make up your own
solos with the major scale. It's a lot of fun.
It's also great as an exercice to work on practicing picking individual strings
and for the dexterity of your fingers to move them around to sit on
individual frets and being able to play individual lines which you need if
you want to play riffs, ornements when you add things to chords later on
as well. There's loads of reasons why practicing scales is a good thing.
It's kind of got a bad rap. I think some people imagine practicing scales
for hours and hours at a time. I don't think you should, you know, let
practicing scales become an all consuming thing. But it should be
part of your practice routine because of it's many benefits for both hands
and the synchronisation between the hands and loads of other stuff.
So, let's get in and check out how to play C major scale in the open
position.
So, we're gonna start C major scale on the note C.
This is really an important part of practicing scales. It's starting and
ending on the root note of the scale, the note name of the scale. This is the note
C here, on the third fret of the fifth string. Now, the fret number and the
finger number happen to be the same. So, all notes in the first fret will be
the first finger, all notes in the second fret will be played with
the second finger, all notes in the third fret will be played with the
third finger, and we're not using the little finger for this exercice.
So, starting third finger, third fret fifth sting.
Use down picks throughout for this exercice. Then we're gonna play
open fourth string.
OK? Fourth string no fingers on it, that's open. Second finger second fret.
Thrid finger, third fret.
Then we're gonna play the open G string.
That's the third string.
Second finger, second fret.
And open second string, the B string.
First finger, first fret.
Third finger, third fret.
Open thinnest string.
First finger, first fret.
Third finger, third fret.
And immediately back down, so we're not going to play that note twice.
We go back to the firsr finger, first fret.
Open thinnest string.
Third finger, third fret, on the second string.
Then the first finger.
Then open.
Second fret on the third string, with the second finger.
Then open.
Then third finger, third fret, fourth string.
Second finger.
Open.
Now, third finger, third fret, fifth string.
Second fret.
And open A string, that's the fifth string.
Third finger third fret of the thickest string.
Now first finger, first fret of the tickest string, many of
you will find that a bit of a reach.
Then the open string. We've gone as low as we can now.
Back to the first finger, first fret.
Third finger, third fret.
Open A string.
Second finger, second fret.
And then coming back to third finger on the third fret.
Let me play that for you one time now just straight up and down a
little faster so you can get the idea of what you are aiming for.
A couple of really important things about playing scales that I want to
explain to you now. This first one is this idea that practice makes
permanent not perfect. OK, I'm sure you all have heard "Practice makes
perfect". It doesn't. Practice makes permanent, so practice perfectly.
Really, really important. When it comes to practicing scales and
especially the first few times that you learn them, you want do them
really, really slowly and try and get them right. Because if you
build the code correctly in your brain, then you just say to your
brain "Hey, do that thing I was just doing but do it faster."
And if it's got clear messaging and it knows exactly what finger is
going to go where and how far they have to move, that kind of thing,
it's relatively easy to speed things up and keep them accurate. Whereas
if your brain, the coding in your brain is going "Put your second finger in
that note. Now lift it up it's on the wrong...lift it up move it over there"
if the coding is all jumbled, it's alot harder to speed it up. You end up
with a bit of a mess and especially if you try and memorise it and you
get it wrong, it's really hard to get it right again. It's gonna take
a lot of effort to get it back into the right place. So, the first few
times that you practice the scale you want to do it super slow. Like...
look at thre page, open fourth string, OK.
Second finger, second fret.
Then, third finger, third fret...
You know, I talk to myself rather probably more than I should, but
saying it out loud, making sure that you got exactly the right finger in
the right place. Really, really helpfull. Another tip that you
might find usefull is only going up to start of with. So just practicing...
going up and your going slowly.
Just up then stop.
A lot slower than that but just going up the scale a few times first.
Maybe for the first three or four days your just going to go all
of the way up. This is partly to do with the memorisation process.
Now, for me when I'm practicing the scale doing the left-handed
stuff I've got a head start here because I know exactly what the
scale looks like. I know where the fingers should go. Si I'm getting
the physical benefits there and trying to pick the right notes
getting the fingers, the dexterity of the fingers working, but
the actual memorisation of the scale is already done.
For many of you, that will be part of the battle, is learning to memorise
this new shape. Making a map of the scale in your mind. Because
you definitely need to memorise it. It's not something that wants to be
staying on the page. You need to practice it over and over again
and build a map of what it looks like in your mind. Great practice
can be when your away from the instrument. Being able to close
your eyes and picture what the scale shape looks like. See where
the dots are. That fact that the pattern on the fifth and fourth
strings is the same. That on the G string, on the third string, there's
only two notes and it involves your second finger which isn't
used in other parts, not on it's own. The thinnest two strings
are using the first and the third fingers and not the second finger.
The same on the thickest string, you know. So, it's kind of making
this little map and seeing where those dots lie as a shape can be
really, really helpfull. When it comes time to practice the whole thing,
you definitely want to be starting on this lowest root note all the
way up as far as you can go in that position, in that area of
the neck. Then down as low as you can go then back up to the
root note. The reason that this is important is it's trainig your
ears to hear the sound of the major scale. The major scale is this
do, re, mi, fa, so, la ,ti, do. If doesn't sound like do, re, mi, fa, so, la ,ti, do,
you've got something wrong. So you want...you kind of...on top of all the
dexterity of both hands and the picking of notes individually
and all of that, your actually training your ears to hear the
sound of the major scale which is massively usefull as well.
When it comes to picking, it's very likely you're going to struggle
a bit to pick the right string. You'll probably find, well I
find like fifty percent of the time it's ok then the other half of
the time I'm picking wrong strings.
You want and try doing it slowly enough that you do get it right
more than fifty percent. So nearly all of the time you should be getting
the right string but even if by the end of your practice for this lesson you're
still getting some picks on the wrong strings, that's, I think
that's to be expected. It's gonna take probably six months or more
to be able to get the pick, to accurately pick the right string all the time.
There are a couple of things that you might like to try to help.
One of them is using an anchor. So using your little finger to actually
rest on the fretboard while you pick the notes. Now, I find that
a little bit cumbersome for me because my little finger is really short.
So makes lots of tension in my hand. It doesn't feel nice.
But there's a lot of fantastic guitar pickers that do rest the little finger
on the fretboard. I'm not sure it's the best approach because
everyone is different and there are lots of different approaches
to picking on the guitar and it seems that lots of the best players
do it slighly differently. So I'm reluctant to say that there is a
right way or a wrong way. I used to say that you should definitely
anchor, I call an anchor, anchor the little finger there, and it is
the way that I learned, that I spend most of my life using an anchor.
I'm less certain now as I'm getting a bit older, I'm saying more players
play different ways and I'm reluctant to say you should
definitely do it that way. But definitely give it a try and see
if it works for you. When I'm learnig left-handed I'm not
doing it. I'm having a go at trying to learn without it.
But that's not to say that you should also follow that. I'm just
having a go at doing it that way because I learned right-handed
using the anchor. So I'm just experimenting. You should give it
a go or not, not or not, you should definitely give it a go and see if
it works for you and if does work for you, stick with it. If it helps
you pick more accurately, stick with it. If you find it creates
tension in your hand and you don't like the idea, then you might want
to think about ditching that. If you get confortable enough with the
scale, that you find you can play the notes with a consistent rythm,
then you should definitely explore playing it along with a metronome.
Maybe around 60 or 80 beats per minute would be a good starting point
and just making sure that you put your down pick on each clic.
Really work on playing with the clic, don't rush ahead of it, don't pull
back behind it, don't anticipate it. Try and get the picking to sit
exactly with the metronome if you're going to practice with a metronome.
But I wouldn't feel that you have to this lesson. NITSUJ is not
doing that. I'm just, he--I, argh still battling with the first person
situation with NITSUJ, but whatever. He is not doing it. Especially next
lesson wer're going to be looking at improvising with it which is again
quite a free thing. Playing with a metronome is a good idea for
your technique and developping the synchronisation of the hands
but maybe not necessary at this stage. You might want to wait
until we're doing alternate picking so down picks and ups before
working with the metronome. It's a little bit down to you how you
feel about your timing and how you feel about playing the scale, how
difficult you find it. So there's a little bit of leaway as to how
you're going to approach that one.
I really hope you enjoy your scale practice. There are a lot of
technical benefits for both your picking dexterity of the fretting
hand and you definitely going to enjoy improvising with it,
in the coming weeks.