“Hey I've heard you're a great guitar teacher and I'd like to learn to play
guitar? How should I get started? “ Well you're
gonna have to learn scales “Oh do I really have to learn
scales?” Yes! You're gonna have to learn scales.
“ But I don't want to learn scales”. Click. He hung up. Some guitar teachers believe
beginners have to learn scales to get started. Then
there's other guitar teachers that think you don't have to learn any skills
just play by songs. Well the actual truth is, it's somewhere
in between. Skills really are very valuable
but in proportion to the other things that you're practicing. I'd like my
beginning students to start off with a foundation of a beginning scale
that'll serve them for years and years to come and of
course they can always build on. Well I don't know about you but before I
spend my time on something I want to know why.
This work on scales today is really going to provide
a foundation for understanding and practically using music theory. It will
also improve your finger accuracy and your dexterity. One of the more
subtle aspects is it trains your ear. When your fingers go on the notes
and you hear this over and over, it trains your ears to kind of just know
where the notes are. And it's also going to help with playing
melodies, doing bass runs on the guitar. It will actually help you play chords
better because the work on getting the fingers in the right place
by just doing a simple scale when you play more than one note
it transfers over. So to be clear, I'm going to start you off with a major
scale. It's the foundation of all western music. And I think the best one to start
off with is the C major scale because it's used
so much as an example when explaining music theory and of course a
lot of the songs are in the key of C major.
So what is a scale exactly? Well a scale is just a combination of
notes one after the other with a spacing between each note that is
a consistent formula. For a major scale, the spacing is a whole step, whole step
then a half step, whole step, whole step, whole step
and half step. Mouthful, huh. On the guitar that translates into 2 frets
2 fret. 1 fret. 2 fret, 2 fret, 2 fret
1 fret. It's a formula that's used for all major scales. In other words when you
start on C and you play the notes in that formula
with that spacing it comes out to be a C major scale. If
you start on G same thing. It becomes a G major scale. A
you got an A major scale and so on. I'm going to show you something that
it is a good practice but for right now I'm using it more as a demonstration.
Here's the C major scale on 1 fret. This is a way you can see the spacing
easily. C we go whole step, 2 frets
whole step. Now a half step that means 1 fret.
Now a whole step. We got 3 whole steps to go. Whole step,
whole step and then the half step. I think whole, whole, half, whole, whole
half. I said that so many times in my mind
that it just stuck so try this with me just once and the C
major scale starting with C note third fret on the fifth string.
And mostly I want you to listen whole, 2 more frets whole step, half,
now whole, whole, whole and half
C major scale. So obviously that's cool for demonstration purposes
but it's not how we normally play the scale. We're going to re-figure the notes
so we can kind of stay in one place here. Here's what it's going to look like.
We'll start with a C. We'll go on to the next string which is open.
I'm playing the same notes
but I'm just going across the strings.
And now to start off it's important that I
started on C and ended on C that's an important part of ear training. You want
to get that sound clearly in your mind going from
C to C or any note in the major scale. But over time once that becomes kind of
fixed in your mind it's okay to go below and above.
For now let's start off going from C to C.
Do it with me and I'll tell you the fingering. And by the way when I say fret
it'll be the same number as the finger for now. If I say third finger it'll be
third fret. Third fret will be third finger, that's
not always the case when you're doing scales up in here but
for now that works. So start with 3 on the fifth string
open on the 4
2 on the 4
3 on the fourth string. Now open on the third
two on the third string, open on the second string
and then one.
Okay, good. I hope you get that okay.
Now that's C to C. Practice it and practice it
slowly. Practice it in a way that you can get each of the notes to sound clear
and keep checking your fingers to make sure they're just in the right place.
See you're training your fingers to automatically go in the right place and
the way you do that, repetition. Your mind is kind of
recording the movements so if you fumble do it fast and fumble.
It's recording the fumbling especially if you miss a note and come
back it's actually recording that too and you have to keep
undoing it. You may not notice it you know right away but over time if you
keep it in the wrong note that's where your finger will go without
thinking about it. So I'll say it, again go slow. You're training your fingers.
This is a hard one that I have getting across especially to adult
students. They think they should always go a little bit faster,
that's not the issue here. The issue is accuracy and here's a couple things to
pay attention to. You may not thought of. One is of course getting your fingers
close to the frets not too far but nice angle, good hand
position. When you feel yourself tensing up try to
relax and come back at it. The other thing is try to little by
little notice how much pressure you're putting.
Put just enough pressure to get a good sounding note.
Don't clamp down as hard as you can. If you have to clamp down,
you've probably got a little adjustment to do with your fingering. That's a bad
habit that most students get is pressing harder than they need to and
then getting sore hands. It's not bad. It's just part of the process so you
learn over time just how far you have to press assuming that you
adjust your fingers and get them in the most optimal position.
So that's enough to get you going C to C but we're going to add a little bit to
it because I know you're going to get this
even if it takes a week or two to get nice and clean.
I want you to then start going backwards so we went
and you'll notice too I'm just going down with my pick. Keep it simple at
first then you start going back the scale.
Okay so you keep going forwards and backwards.
You get that. Try and keep an even tempo. Be careful not to ingrain the habit of
speeding up and slowing down constantly because that does get to be a habit.
And like everything else don't worry about it too much just
pay attention. Keep it a light attention and you notice that you're speeding up
and then slowing down. Try to even it out. Now you're doing
pretty good with that. Let's add some notes. I'm going to add
the notes that are on the first string. Watch.
We'll go from the beginning ...
Now I'm going to keep going third finger on the third fret,
second string, open first string. You can see it on the diagram too. First
finger and then third finger. Those are all
notes in the C scale but you'll notice it doesn't sound
complete because it's not actually ending on C if i want to end on C let's
go. There's the other C. We're not going to
do that but once you've trained your ear to hear from
C to C, it's okay to extend beyond that if any time you start losing the sense
of does that sound like a major scale go back to going from C to C
so you get here. Hear that, nice clean stop and start. Now we're going to add a
few notes below that. Start with C here go second finger on
the fifth string second fret I
already said that huh. Open, third finger
first finger and then open that low note is also a part of the
scale but again we can't go all the way down to C
and then back up.
So I'm going to demonstrate now what the scale is going to sound like. I still
recommend start on C. Here it is
now back down
and then back to C.
Okay so if this is new to you don't start there.
Train your ear to hear C to C. Believe me, I've seen people make that mistake
then extend beyond that. So you don't want the scale to be your entire
practice session. This is the kind of thing you practice a
little bit of time maybe each day. I like to do scales as a warm-up and it
gets me focused and gets my fingers warmed up. The thing is
you're gonna memorize this scale and that might take a little extra work
to kind of get there. It's hard to pay attention to details if you haven't got
it memorized so put a little effort into memorizing
it. Try to imagine the notes in your mind without
looking at the guitar then go back and play it and
do that back and forth a few times it really helps. There might be other
techniques that either you or other students have come across that they
can put in the comments that would be great but once you got it memorized it's
much easier to actually use the scale the way it's
meant to be used. So that's it for today. This is day 24 of my 30 days of guitar
coaching program. Thanks for being here with me and I'll
be back tomorrow with day 25. I have no idea what I'm gonna film but
it's gonna be good. See you then.