Posts tagged: Guitar Scales

September 7, 2010

How to Add Variety to Your Guitar Solos with a Cool Japanese Minor Pentatonic Scale Part 1

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Welcome back!

In today’s lesson, we will look at a cool Japanese minor pentatonic scale you can add to your guitar soloing toolkit.

This cool scale will add variety and a fresh sound to your guitar solos.

The Japanese minor pentatonic scale we will look at is called the Hirajoshi scale.

First, let’s examine its construction:

So to build this scale, you would take the major scale and lower the third and sixth notes (degrees) by one semitone each.

You also need to drop out the 4th and 7th degrees.

Let’s say you want to build an A Hirajoshi scale.

First take the A major scale:

Second, lower the 3rd and 6th scale degrees by one semitone each:

Third, you drop out the 4th and 7th degrees:



Your result is:

So, an A Hirajoshi scale consists of the following notes:

A         B            C            E            F

One other way to build this scale is to simply take the minor scale and drop out the 4th and 7th  degrees.  When you build the Hirajoshi scale from the natural minor scale, you don’t have to lower any notes.  You just need to drop out the 4th and 7th  degrees.

Since the Hirajoshi scale is simply a minor scale with the 4th and 7th notes omitted, it means you could use this scale where you normally use a natural minor scale.

Now it’s time to take a look at one of the ways to play the A Hirajoshi scale:

Practice this scale forwards and backwards:

In part 2 of this post we will look at additional ways to practice this scale, a chord vamp that you can use to practice soloing with this scale, and we will look at creating your own solo with this scale.

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August 30, 2010

Guitar Scales: A Quick and Easy Way to Play Major Scales in Every Key on Guitar

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In my post Here’s a Quick Way to Understand the Major Scale on Guitar, we looked at how major scales are put together.  Today we are going to look at a quick way to play the major scale in every key.  To do this we need to first look at a moveable major scale fingering.

Moveable scales are as their name implies—moveable.  This means that you can take one scale shape and move it up and down the neck of the guitar to produce any desired scale.  In other words, once you learn one of the moveable shapes for a major scale, you just have to move it up or down to produce 11 different major scales.

Here is how it works.  The black notes in each scale form represent the root notes.  The root note indicates the letter-name of the scale.

If we move the following 6th root major scale form so that the first finger is on the 8th fret, you will have a C major scale.

Tip: Notice that there are three root notes in the above scale form.  For this fingering, we are only concerned with the root note on the sixth string.  All you have to do is position the scale so that the root note is on the appropriate fret. The other root notes found in the scale form will automatically match up.

Now move this same scale shape so that the sixth root is on the first fret.  Since the root note is on the note F, we now have an F major scale.

See how simple that is?

This one scale form can be moved up or down the fretboard to produce any major scale that you want.

This is the big thing that is missing from most guitar scale books.

Most guitar players flip through a guitar scale book and think that there is no way that they will ever learn all of those scales.

But here’s the thing:  Most scale books will show the same scale form on different pages as if it was a different scale form.

In other words, the major scale form that you were just shown would be found in a typical scale book on one page as F major.  Then the next page would show the same scale form on the second fret and call it F# major or Gb major.  Then the next page will show the exact same fingering on the third fret and call it G major.  The problem is that most of the scale books never explain that it’s just one shape moved up and down the fretboard! This of course leads to needless confusion.

Now there are lots of other ways of play major scales.  To get good on guitar and create your own guitar solos, you will want to master these fingerings.

But guess what?

These other scale forms can be played as moveable fingerings as well.  So the best way to learn to play any type of scale, whether it be major, minor, harmonic minor, Dorian, Phrygian, etc, is to learn the appropriate set of master fingerings and then simply move the fingerings up or down the fretboard to produce any scale that you want.  It’s that simple.

If you are a beginner or intermediate guitar player and want to quickly learn these “master scale fingerings” check out–>  Guitar Essentials: Scale Master Expanded Edition.  If you are an intermediate or advancing guitarist check out -> The World of Scales: A Compendium of Scales for the Modern Guitar Player.


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August 17, 2010

Play Guitar: 5 Things Every Beginner Guitar Player Needs to Know

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1. There is no such thing as an overnight guitar success. Sorry, but you cannot learn to play the guitar like a virtuoso overnight! The good news is you can learn your first guitar chords, guitar scales and possibly even your first song on your first night.

However, there is a catch. Even though you may be able to play the notes in the song, it will still take focused practice for you to play guitar and sound like a pro.

2. The “free” guitar tab sites are not always accurate. Some of the free tab you find on the Internet is okay, but unfortunately, a lot of it is wrong. I am sure you do not want to waste your time learning a song only to discover later that the tab is wrong.

Remember, anyone can put up a website or post to a site. This means that someone who has only played guitar for a month could have done the tab you are about to learn! I recommend getting started with real, professionally published songbooks. Once you have been playing for a while you can explore the free tablature.

3. Spend some time learning guitar songs. This might seem obvious, but I still see beginners that think they have to learn a ton of things before they can start playing songs. Unfortunately, a lot of these beginners end up quitting out of sheer frustration or boredom before they get into the fun stuff: playing songs.

Remember the reason you decided to play guitar: to play your favourite guitar songs. If you never spend any time working on fun songs, how long do you think you will continue to play guitar?

4. Spend time learning guitar chords, guitar scales and guitar theory. If you spend all of your guitar time learning and practicing songs, it will actually take you longer to learn songs than it should. Chords, scales and theory are the building blocks of songs. Once you know how these building blocks work you will be able to learn songs faster.

5. Set aside a specific amount of time each day that is just for guitar practice. Imagine you decide that you want to get into good physical shape. You join a gym and start to workout. Let us say you do this once a month. How long do you think it would take you to get into good shape? Now compare this to working out 3-4 times a week or even daily. What do you think your results would be?

It is obvious. If you workout daily, you will get into better shape quicker than if you were to workout only once a month.

It is no different when learning to play the guitar. Playing the guitar once a month does not give your brain and fingers enough practice for you to learn the guitar in a reasonable amount of time. As a bear minimum, you should practice at least once every week. If you want better results, you will want to practice at least every other day. If you want to learn the guitar fast, practice every day.

I know what you are thinking. You have all kinds of time commitments. There is not enough time in the day to do this.   For some ideas on how to get more time for playing guitar check out my article: 17 Ways to Get More Time to Play Guitar.  Now here is the important thing to keep in mind:

You will progress at a faster rate if you practice thirty minutes each day as opposed to playing for an hour every other day. Think about this: if you cram the night before an exam, you may still be able to do reasonably well, but you will find that the information will not remain in your long-term memory for very long. A few days or weeks after the big exam, most of the information that was “crammed” will be forgotten.

Research has shown that distributed practice (learning spread over many sessions) is far superior for recall than massed practice (cramming everything into one session).

Consistent daily practice will improve your motor skills exponentially. Mastery of the guitar requires that you not only memorize chords, scales, songs, etc, but you must also fine-tune your motor skills.

The good news is that you do not have to practice for hours and hours every day to learn to play the guitar. Once you understand how to practice for maximum results, you will be able to get great results from every practice session. Whether your practice session is 20 minutes or an hour, when you know how to practice you will get great results.

Check out Guitar Accelerator to discover how to get great results every time you pick up your guitar to play. Learn how to play guitar to unleash the master guitar player within.

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