Saturday, May 18, 2013

How to use guitar scales to jam?

guitar jam tracks
 on Naming the Guitar Strings | Guitar Teacher
guitar jam tracks image



A. de Vrie


How do you actually apply/use guitar scales. I know these patterns but how do you use them to play with a jam track or make your own music? Do you need to know how every note in the scale sounds and then switch between the notes in some order, really have no idea. Help would be great


Answer
It's called "being a musician"

Go get some lessons.

EDIT: Okay, I was being snarky, but now it's time to be serious. The guy below me is an idiot. Private tuition is the oldest, and still most effective way of learning a musical instrument. It takes years of practice and dedication to become a great musician, and a good teacher can help guide you through your studies so that you make the most efficient use of your practice time. They can also provide constructive criticism on your playing, drawing your attention to things that you probably would not have noticed otherwise, including things that may become bad habits and limit your progress in the future.

If private tuition results in you become an "expressionless machine", then you were never going to be a decent musician in the first place.

I challenge anyone to find a single world-class musician that claims there is no value to private tuition.

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Scales are just sounds, and which sound is appropriate for a given situation is up to the performer to decide. To be a great improvisational musician requires that you know these sounds. You must know how each note relates to the harmony, where the harmony is headed, where it's coming from. Music is not just a series of isolated moments, and you can't think of each chord as being unrelated to the previous or following one. You must consider everything as a whole.

You must also know what makes a melody emotionally effective. How do they move? How do the rhythms change and evolve? It's just like being a good storyteller. You can't just go in there and randomly dick around with various scales and expect it to move people.

Beyond all that, you need to learn to control your instrument. That's really what it's all about. You have your instrument, and with it you create music. The more control you have over that instrument and every nuance of the sound it creates, the more expressive you can be.

It's all part of being a musician, and if you truly want to be the best musician you can, get yourself a good teacher. The best musicians I know still have private studies from time to time, and I know some of the best in the world.



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