Master Guitar Scales for Guitar improvisation
Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 5:45 amScales are an important portion of your creativity, regardless of whichever scales you desire! The more scales you know, the more ways you have of expressing yourself. If you want to take a proved and tested path that will allow you to play the music of many master musicians, I would suggest you learn scales in the following order.
1. Minor Pentatonic. This is the 1st scale and a lot of people learn it. It is easy because it only has 5 notes, and it opens up huge possibilities for improvisation. Some guitar players never require more than this scale.
2. Major pentatonic. This is pretty alike and is a variation of the minor pentatonic.
3. Major Scale. This scale is the base of western music.
4. Natural Minor scale. The major scale and natural minor scale both form the backbone of western music. You can use the pentatonic scale wherever you apply the minor scale because the pentatonic is in reality the minor scale with just a a couple of notes.
With the above collection of scales you can play 95% of music that you are familiar with. If you stop here you can still be a very efficient instrumentalist. The next scales are more particular in their application, but more wonderful and cooler and will start to impart your music with a more special and distinctive feel.
5. Harmonic Minor/Melodic Minor. Two variations of the lower-ranking scales that give a distinct feel, especially the harmonic minor.
6. The major modes are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. These Modes are built according to particular rules. Depending on your own choice, they will give your music of a peculiar feel. The taking of modes helps you greatly when you are thoroughly experienced with the scales I stated previous.
A lot of people don’t make it past the major modes - by the time you master the major modes and the some other scales, you are skilled musician, with a large range of scales and stylings to feed into your composition and soloing.
7. Exotic Scales. I call any scale that I haven’t listed above an “exotic scale” - that’s simply my tag for it. There are hundreds of exotic scales, many of them used in specific types of folk music or Jazz. You could spend many years learning them all, and you can find reference books on them such as the Guitar Grimoire.
8. Modes of Exotic scales. Every scale has associated modes; it is not true that modes merely exist for major scales. They provide you an even better palette of tones to choose from.
