FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The founder of justinguitar.com lends GT his insight as one of the world’s most successful guitar teachers. This Month: Tipping The Scales

Okay my friend. We need to have a chat about scales! Scales are useful things to know, but knowing the scale patterns and knowing when and how to use them are very different things. So in the next few articles we’re going to take a look at various scales to help you determine whether you should be practising them. Then we’ll get into how you can use them to make music. This is my take on how it works, but those passionate about certain niches may disagree, and that’s fine - music is art and there are many perspectives. This is mine.

Minor Pentatonic

This five-note scale is used in many styles but most commonly in blues, because it can be used to improvise over a 12-bar blues, a common format for beginners to learn. It’s an easy way to get started with improvising because all the notes sound pretty okay with all the chords. But that’s the danger - people try improvising blues solos using the scale, but the scale is just an alphabet and it says very little without learning some words. You need to learn words if you want to speak a language, and words are licks. If you take the approach of learning blues licks rather than just using the scale, you’re likely to meet notes outside the Pentatonic. In turn, you’re likely to not develop the fear of ‘notes outside the box’, as many do. If you want to learn to play blues-based music, learn the scale up and down as a guide, and once you’ve memorised it, switch immediately to learning and improvising with licks. You’ll make sense to listeners and learn to speak the language.