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Old March 8th, 2007
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solidwalnut solidwalnut is offline
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Playing guitar for what seems like forever.
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ledhead V-2
...They then go on to list, in order of importance: A minor pentatonic, A major pentatonic, A blues, A major scale, and A natural minor.
I can actually agree with that. But I also completely agree with Kirk. See the thing is that many guitarist tend to treat scales like they are the be-all of learning to be some sort of guitar god. They are really only tools in the tool box; a collection or a pool of tones from which to draw...

I agree with this assessment that these are the really best and basic scales to know in order to play some lead. This is how I basically learned. But this is not the end of the story...

The beginning of the story, imho, needs to be learning chords and the chord shapes that are available. This much is the mechanical aspect of learning. Then comes some theory, and it really needs to start with the major scale--all the other scales and all of music are written from this basic blueprint! When you understand the major scale and it's intervals you can see how all else is born from that mold.

This point of view of scales in itself should be viewed as tools in the tool box, but to lean on them only is very limiting. This is where Plane Talk and the view that the tones to use come from chords very much so complements the scale view!

Many players have only concentrated on playing scales and have gotten lost. Chord tone thinking is the ultimate complement to scales because of the way that the guitar fretboard is mapped. In our modern- western-musical world, the guitar is primarily a chordal instrument for the majority of us! The tones to play can easily be found from the chords.

Steve


Steve Cass
Solid Walnut Music/ASCAP

Becoming a great guitarist has less to do with fancy moves than it does becoming a master of the basics and learning musicianship.
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