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Originally Posted by solidwalnut
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 |
Great advice. Maybe you should change your handle from solidwalnut to the walnutty professor (I mean that in a good way of course); you really seem to know your stuff. Instead of concentrating on learning a lot of scales, which might turn out to be a waste of precious time, maybe I'll just learn those few that
GW recommends and take it from there. Another thing I need to do is spend more time learning chords. But in all honesty, I
loathe trying to learn chords as I find it hard enough to get my fingers into position just to play one simple chord; never mind switching from one chord to another. Some folks seem to be able to do this effortlessly. Me? I can run my fingers up and down the fretboard picking notes at a pretty good clip, but chords frustrate the hell out of me. It may also be why I'm leaning towards learning blues as most of the players seem to pick notes almost exclusively and rarely, if ever, play chords. I mean, I can't ever recall seeing BB King (or that many other bluesmen for that matter) actually playing a chord...