Hello everyone. This is the first post of Vision Music Live's Instructional Blog. Periodically, we will feature the instructors of Vision Music Live sharing their knowledge with you and giving you advice about a variety of aspects of the guitar. As we continue to develop this blog, we hope you'll give us feedback and let us know what it is you practice and what you would like to see addressed in the blog.

Before we dive into looking at many of the ways that scales can aid our development as musicians, it's necessary to make sure that we're on the same page as to what a scale is. A scale can be defined as a set series of half steps and whole steps. Let's take a look at the C major scale. The notes of the C major scale are C,D,E,F,G,A,B. You should notice the major scale follows the pattern of whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. This is the same for every major scale. Most scales follow similar constructions of whole and half steps. For comparison, let's look at the C minor scale. The notes of the C minor scale are C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb. Notice the difference between the C major scale and the C minor scale. They are both combinations of half and whole steps, but the C minor scale has half steps in different places. Some other scales to check out are the Dorian, Mixolydian, Harmonic Minor, and Melodic Minor. These four scales, plus the Pentatonic Scale, comprise most of the material in modern rock music. For a more complete list of scales check out Mel Bay's Scales Guitar Journal.

Open Position

Second Position

Fifth Position

Eighth Position

Perhaps the best way to practice technique is to use sequences. A sequence is a repeated series of intervals through a scale. Every sequence has two parts: a model and copies. The model will set the interval series that will be used to construct the copies. The copies follow the intervals of the model and start on a different note. Let's look at an example. We'll construct a sequence from the first four notes of the C major scale. Our model will be C,D,E,F. Note the intervals between these notes: up a step, up a step, up a step, up a step. Next, we'll start on D, making the notes D,E,F,G. Example 1 shows what the sequence looks like when played through the octave.

Example 2

It is possible to construct a sequence out of any set of intervals. Let's try the combination of up a sixth and down a fourth. Starting on C, our notes for the model will be C, A, and E. Then, starting on D our notes for the first copy will be D, B, and F. Example 2 shows what the sequence looks like when played through the octave. Example 2
 

Harmony

When people think of scales, they normally take the horizontal mentality; that is, they think of each individual note played one at a time. However, a lot can be gained from harmonizing scales. To harmonize a scale, we'll stack up the notes in a scale using a set series of intervals. The most common interval to stack would be a third and doing so will yield the normal triads that make up the major/minor system of chords. Here's the C major scale harmonized in stacked thirds.

Example 3

Of course, while thirds are the most common interval to harmonize with, they're certainly not the only ones that we can use. Stacking seconds, fourths, and fifths are great ways to get interesting new sounds. Here is the same C major scale stacked in fourths.

It's worth mentioning that the chord symbols in this example are just one interpretation since stacked fourths (or any other interval besides thirds) can represent several different chords at once. This is a somewhat complicated issue that will be addressed in a later post on modal playing.

As with sequences, we don't have to limit our harmonization to one set interval. Let's try taking two different intervals, a fifth and a second, and seeing what sounds they'll yield. Note that there are no chord symbols for this example as they would get quite complicated and are open to a lot of debate without the presence of any context. For now, just think of them as being in the key of C and use your ears to decide which to use and which not to.

As you've probably guessed by now, there are many combinations of intervals that we can use. Try making your own chord-voicings by picking random combinations of intervals and seeing where they lead you. If something sticks out to you, write it down.

Improvisation

The use of scales in improvisation is a fine line that we all have to walk every time we make up a guitar solo. Used correctly, a scale based approach can be extremely melodic. Used poorly and it'll sound like someone practicing scales (important to do, but nothing that most people want to listen to). One pitfall that many guitarists fall into while performing scale-based improvisation is staying only in one area of the neck. A former teacher of mine once referred to this as "Boxing Oneself In" and it can lead to running out of ideas pretty quickly. One solution is to think of scales on one string, using them to move around more and explore different areas of the neck. Try this: put on a backing track and improvise only using one string. This seemingly simple exercise is really quite difficult as you'll most likely find yourself constrained by only having a few notes available in any one position. Another great exercise is to limit yourself to only a few notes of the scale and attempt to make interesting lines with them. Like the single string exercise, this is much harder than it sounds.

Conclusion