Saturday, August 16, 2014

Scale Identification Practice

Source: http://www.learn-classical-guitar-today.com/images/NotesOfTheGuitar_ALL.jpg

Some of my students right now are working on some really important skills that will help them better play music with others, write songs, or just plain understand the guitar as a whole. Being able to identify, locate, and play scales all over the neck is an essential part of playing guitar.

When it comes to honing this skill, nothing does the job better than randomly calling out fret/position numbers, keys, forms, or finger roots. It's difficult to make sure you cover it all (all forms in all keys), and it might not even be necessary; but the important things are being able to proficiently "use your dots" as a tool to quickly locate root notes, then, identify form root fingers, and recall the forms themselves. If you were to practice your way through every variable in this exercise, you'd play a over 300 scale patterns, total!

To help you practice, I've created a nice little worksheet which you can download. It's pretty straight forward. All you do is fill in the blanks. Once you get the hang of this sort of thing, you should be able to fly. And, you can easily create your own worksheet to get through all 12 keys in all 5 forms, both major and minor, for pentatonics, 7-tone scales, and harmonic minor scales, varying all five of the blanks on this worksheet!



I'll soon post the answer key.