Many students ask why they need to learn scales as they are seem boring and no fun. We need to go further in our thinking about scales. I think scales have two main purposes. One is to develop coordination in hand development. Many scales use all four fingers and that’s a good thing because we are developing all of the fingers for playing the guitar. This will help our chords and come in handy when playing lead, which is the second reason to learn scales. Anytime you hear someone playing a solo in a rock song they are using a scale. By developing the scale in a creative way you come up with a good solo for the song. I suggest starting with the major scale forms and the on to the blues scales.
I go over all the correct fingerings for each scale in the lessons. Fingering is super important because every finger has a correct place in a good solo. Also without the right fingering you can forget about speed with your leads. Scale speed is also dependant on correct playing with the right hand. The wrist and arm movement is something you want to have right. Too much movement will slow you down and you will not be as accurate with what you are trying to do. I would also highly suggest using a metronome in playing scales. The most knowledgeable teachers I had was my college instructors. They all used a metronome regularly in their playing. Funny thing, the students that need it the most never seem to use one at all. One last point and this is important. You don’t need to learn a hundred scale forms to be a good player. Make sure you have two forms of each, one with the root note on the 6th string and one with the root note on the 5th string. If you can do this you will always be ready to play solos.
Now which scales do you use for the solo? I will need to go over that in the lessons!