How To Learn Guitar Scales

How would you like to pass the music from your brain to your fingers without stopping to think?

Scales are your raw material, and you need them there when you're ready to play!

You know what scales are, right? You know that any given scale is in many different places on the fingerboard waiting for your fingers to arrange them in new and interesting combinations so that you and anybody within earshot will turn around and go "Whoaa!!!"

To play like that is possible, but it takes something more than gritting your teeth and learning the scales in all positions like a kid learning the times tables. You need to stop thinking. You need a new approach. You need some air!

If you start learning scales, and have some success in improvising with quite likely you'll tend to stick with what you've practiced so far, and maybe be a little reluctant to press on with widening your knowledge.

Scales are made up of notes. You've seen the diagrams that show you where to put your fingers to play a certain scale in a particular position. It's easy to learn scales this way, so you see the patterns of notes all over the fingerboard, but you're not able to use all the other kinds of relationships between the notes because your knowledge of the guitar neck is not fluid enough.

Okay, you can impress your non-player friends with what you can do so far, but you know it's not enough!
Some guitarists have approached these kinds of problems by practicing fifteen hours a day. Some deliberately don't over practice, hoping the adrenalin rush of flying by the seat of their pants will give their playing what it lacks.

Is there some other direction you can go in to add the "Whoaaa!!!" factor to your playing? Well, yes - it's here!