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Originally Posted by gravitas
I have a question. How come we demonize the scale so much here? I don't want to commit some egregious error in asking, having not yet had the pleasure of purchasing Planetalk (though I plan to place it on order just as soon as I get the cash!), I'm just a little in the dark as to what the philosophy to guitar playing is around these parts. If it's knowledge only to be imparted upon receiving the book, I'm totally cool with that; it'll just make me enjoy the book more for the waiting. |
It is not so much demonize as trying to counter the mistaken belief of a lot of players that scales are the perfect means to play music. They are a tool and usefull in context,but can suck you in to a lifetime of mediocre playing if your not carefull. Scales are not melodic by nature. How often do you walk down the street whistling a scale? Melody likes big jumps all over the fretboard. Scales are linier and tend to go in fixed patterns. We have become accustomed to hearing scales so much in music now because they are easy to burn into muscle memory so you can play them very very fast. The downside is that you are not thinking your way through a tune and tend to sound generic. Often a scale riff seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the underlying chords. In other words you could isolate the scale from the tune and find it very difficult to figure out what tune it was from. You need to know a huge number of scales because as soon as you hit an outside chord in a tune, your scale needs to change to match it or you will sound awfull. I had a friend who chose the wrong scale for a tune and played the whole thing off key. He didn't notice because he was listening to his scale runs and ignoring what the underlying chords were telling him.
That is not to say that scale players can't play melodicly,but it is in spite of the scales not because of them. I used to love listening to scale runs in the blues,but after my ears opened up with P.T. I find them boring and they act like white noise to me. As soon as I hear a scale my ears turn off. Once you buy P.T. you can go to the P.T. forum and talk to some recovering scale players who will give you their take on it.