Guitar-Lessons

We can learn a lot by critically listening to songs. When you know what to listen for, you will find many ways to quickly improve your songwriting skills.

When you start writing songs on guitar for the first time, it can often be a bit overwhelming. Where do you start? What do you do? Those first obstacles of getting your first song together are too much for some people.

The other side of the spectrum is, once you’ve written a few songs, how do you improve your songwriting? Is it something that you can improve, or are you stuck with what you are able to do?

The minor pentatonic scale is one of the most widely used scales for soloing and improvising on guitar. A combination of simple to learn shapes along with scale tones that easily fit over chord progressions make the minor pentatonic scale an incredibly effective scale for soloing with.

There are a few different ways of playing the scale. We will look at a system that uses 5 shapes for the scale, covering the whole guitar neck.

3 note per string scale patterns are favoured amongst shred guitar players, but the patterns have caused controversy amongst the online guitar community. Let’s take a look at what 3 note per string patterns are and how they can benefit your playing.

What Are Three Note Per String Scale Patterns On Guitar?

I always like to spell out things that appear obvious, because I’m always the guy that never picks up on the obvious.

Most guitar players have heard of [3 note per string modes]( {{ < ref “/blog/2021-03-09-3-note-per-string-scale-patterns” >}} ) and other systems for scales on guitar, but why should you put the time into learning scale patterns on guitar? Here are 6 reason why:

1. You Will Learn How to Create Different Sounds

Different scales will create different sounds, or moods. By learning how to play different scales, you will learn how to create different sounds and emotions with your guitar.

Improvising on guitar is one of the most fun skills there is. Few things are more fun than putting on a good backing track and jamming over it for hours on end! But how do you improve your improvising on guitar? In this article we will look at some ideas that you can start using to improve - today!

If you are new at improvising, then check out the [beginners guide on how to start improvising on guitar]( {{ < ref “/blog/2018-05-20-improvise-guitar-even-complete-beginner” >}} ).

One of the best songwriting tools I ever learned was how to build chords from the [major scale]({{ < ref “/blog/2021-03-09-chords-in-the-major-scale” >}}).

This is sometimes called “the harmonised major scale”, because the scale has been harmonised with itself.

The harmonised major scale is a must know topic for anyone wanting to start writing their own songs, improvising, or just wanting to learn more about music in general.

What is the Harmonised Major Scale?

If we take the notes in the major scale and stack them on top of each other in a certain way, we can create a series of chords from the scale. This series of chords is called the harmonised major scale.

The blues scale is great for not only blues, but also pop, rock and metal lead guitar playing. Today, we’ll look at what the blues scale is,how you can use it in your guitar playing, and a few licks you can play to give the scale a go.

What is the Blues Scale?

The blues scale is a modified minor pentatonic scale. The minor pentatonic scale has the following intervals:

1 b3 4 5 b7

To create the blues scale, we add a b5 to the minor pentatonic scale:

Sometimes, when thinking about learning guitar or improving your playing, it’s easy to think of all the things we can’t do:

• I can’t play like XYZ player
• I’ll never play fast
• I can’t write songs

And often, the cause of these thoughts is a belief in “natural talent”. Or more specifically, it’s the belief that:

I can’t do that, because I don’t have any natural talent

Today, we are going to take the idea of natural talent, and blast it into a million pieces.

Neoclassical guitar scales are really, really fun. By playing neoclassical scales on guitar, we can create some incredibly rich and interesting sounds in our playing an improvising. Lets take a look at some of these neoclassical scales and how we can use them in our guitar playing:

The Harmonic Minor Scale

The original king of neoclassical guitar scale, the harmonic minor scale has an unmistakable sound. The harmonic minor scale has the intervals:

The Hirajoshi scale has a very eastern sort of sound to it. It is a more exotic scale, and is not as common as say the minor pentatonic scale, or even the harmonic minor scale. But it does have a very cool sound. If you have listened to players like Marty Friedman then you have probably heard it before.

This is going to give you a complete guide to using it. I will cover not only the theory, but a practical guide on implementing the scale, so you can use it in your improvising and playing.