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Which Scale: Improvising With Pentatonics
The stage is set. The fans have gathered and the band opens up with it’s first song. Quick, it’s time for a solo, but what do you play? That’s easy. We’ll just improvise! “To improvise means to make it up on the spot, right?”, you ask. Yes, we’re going to make the solo up as…
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Standard Tuning
Standard tuning is when the guitar is tuned to E, a, d, g, b, e. In the music industry it is the assumed default if a specific tuning is not mentioned. Standard tuning provides simple fingering for many chords and the ability to play common scales with reasonable left-hand movement. The separation of the first…
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Pentatonic Scale
The word pentatonic gets it’s name from the Greek word “penta” which means 5 and tonic which stands for tone. That’s what pentatonic scales are: 5 tone scales. There are only 5 basic pentatonic patterns. They are the C, A, G, E, and D. They are similar to the 5 basic chord patterns, because they can be closely associated…
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Tonic
The tonic is the first scale degree of a diatonic scale (for example, the major scale, is a diatonic scale). Sometimes it’s called the 1st scale step, or the 1st. The tonic is often confused with the root, which is the reference note of a chord, rather than that of the scale. It is often…
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Learning The Guitar
I remember when I first started learning the guitar. I had a cheap little blue electric guitar with a matching amp that my parents bought me when I was 12. Every since that day, I’ve been expanding my knowledge of the instrument. At first, though, it was hard playing that little blue guitar. I couldn’t…
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An Introduction To Intervals And Scales (Video)
This video will help you to understand what intervals and scales are.
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The Right Wrong Notes
Beyond The Box When playing music we can use scales as a guide which will tell us what notes will work best for a particular song. The pentatonic scale is a good example. The five notes in the pentatonic are all you need sometimes, but at some point may players want to be able to…
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“Hate Me” by Blue October
Difficulty: Easy We are going to work on this song a little differently. The other guitars that are played in the song only mimic the actual acoustic guitar, so instead of playing those parts, let’s improvise. Below is the entire acoustic theme, from beginning to end.
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What Is Caged?
CAGED gives you a way to think about the fret board that merges scales with chords and arpeggios. Basically there are five stationary position scales that correspond with the five chord shapes. CAGED is not an invention. Nor is it something made up to sound fancy and fool you. CAGED is a system that is…
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How Do I Play Scales?
Scales are a collection of notes that go together. They can be practiced by playing one note at a time. They are not chords which are a group of notes played at one time. Scales can be played by going up the scale pattern and then down. This means we’ll start with the note lowest in…