[hawaii04]

Hi all.i've been playing for just 6 months (age 36). My 7 yr old son started lessons at school & i got hooked too. started with a few lessons but mainly been looking on the internet and buying books. I can now play a handful of songs with basic chords , just getting to grips with F and B. My question is what is the next step? I've been reading about scales but can't seem to understand what they are and what you do with them. I play acoustic and just starting to practice basic barre chords.Thanks

[timvass]

You know when kids ask But Why??? and your thinking I could explain but it would take an hour and you would get bored.That sort of like What are scales for? .

I have been playing a long time and can well remember wondering the same thing.

Ok here goes in the simple way my mind works.

If you have learnt a few basic songs with chords you will have noticed that the same goup of chords can be used to play along to different songs.You can change the order but the main chords remain the same.As you try more songs you will learn songs with the same chords in the same order just a different melody . These groups are because the music is in particular key.


Example if you are playing in the key of D say you can use
Dmajor
A 7
G major
(you can add lots of others but start simple)

If you are trying to find the chords to somthing by yourself this simplifies things. Start singing "Sloop john b" strumming a d chord and at some point you will hear it doesnt fit.
This is a chord change , and because you are in D its either G or
A7.

This is a big step forward from staring at chords on a page and trying to memorize the order and rember the right palce to change chords.You are starting to see there are rules.

Its like if you drop somthing you have always known it will fall but you may not understand Newtons laws of gravity.Some chords sound right with a melody and some just dont .

Scales are the other side of this coin.They are group of single notes that work together.Usefull because if you are tring to play melody over chords you know wich ones will fit.You can learn them like chord shapes without knowing the name of every note ,and use them to play along with chord progressions.

This is the basic idea and leads on to creating your own tunes and solos. There are rules and formuli that tell use which notes go in a chord and how scales are built blah blah .....

But what are scales for ? to make palying melody lines easier.

Tim

[solidwalnut]

Hello hawaii04--

The next step is to just get better and better at playing with and switching chords cleanly. All else comes from playing chords. It will come in time.

Have fun with this!

Steve

[Ben_Sir_Amos]

1. Emulate your guitar heroes. Copying is good. Actually, they don't have to be heroes - just anyone you fancy.

2. And, as soon as you possibly can, start playing alongside other people. Ensemble playing teaches you so much - and it also highlights the things you need to work on next.

3. And straight away, continue to have fun and enjoy playing. Never lose that and you will never stop playing guitar.

4. As you progress, the value of the theory stuff will become apparent and you will want to do it to understand.

[Alawiggle]

Originally Posted by hawaii04

Hi all.i've been playing for just 6 months (age 36). My 7 yr old son started lessons at school & i got hooked too. started with a few lessons but mainly been looking on the internet and buying books. I can now play a handful of songs with basic chords , just getting to grips with F and B. My question is what is the next step? I've been reading about scales but can't seem to understand what they are and what you do with them. I play acoustic and just starting to practice basic barre chords.Thanks

I'd learn your barre shapes. They'll come in helpful later on. For example, that F you're coming to grips with? Soon as you get it down, you can turn it into F#, G, G#, A, A# and so on at the drop of a dime! Same with B. A technique I sometimes use to get used to barre chords is to take a regular song I can play, and turn all the chords into barre chords.

[hawaii04]

Thanks guys.amazing forum you got going here and so many great past threads for me to get through.finding barres so difficult at the moment but i know it will come with time.

[Kirk Lorange]

hawaii04 ... I'm glad you're enjoying the site.

For what it's worth, I've been playing for 46 years and I never really ever found scales very useful. If you're serious about your playing, you will need to know the major scale. It's the master scale that all others (the modes, which are just scales) are compared to, so if you really know it, the others are easy to see and understand. Having said that, in all my years of playing I've never consciously played a scale or mode in 'real' music. Real music is melody and harmony and those elements are always firmly embedded in the chords of whatever the tune is, so my advice to keep working away at chords. Do that so that you can play them as chords, but also so that you can use the notes that make up each chord as melodic building blocks. So see them as chords, and as clusters of single notes that can become melody with a bit of knowhow.

As Ben_Sir_Amos suggests, copy stuff you like, especially melody lines you like. Even the simplest of melodies are great to figure out, learn, perfect ... then forget if you want. It's the figuring out, the listening, the imitation of the feel of the originals that's important. The more you can get those fingers to be limber and free to seek out notes you hear in your head and play them, the better. Eventually, it all starts to condense into a manageable, understandable and predictable set of rules ... what we call theory. There's nothing theoretical about it. There's a definite structure there with a zillion permutations to explore.

But, all the advice given here is good ... we all approach this beast called Music from different angles in order to tame it. Have fun, that's the main thing.