Learn Guitar Scales the Easy Way

When learning most instruments, instructors start with basic scales; this also holds true for guitar. When you play the piano, your fingers play notes up and down the keys; in the guitar the fingers move across the strings. Becoming familiar with this technique is necessary to learn chords and, eventually, to make music.

A fantastic way to begin learning scales is by practicing them on only one string. Alternate between holding down a fret and letting go of it, playing up and down the string until you get used to it. Try playing scales on every string you have, once you start getting used to the scales on the individual strings. Much as you did on the first string, play each note between the fifth and eighth frets. Play through this pattern on each string. When you’ve finished going down the scale on each string, use all four fingers on each string to return to the top.

It’s important to practice every day in order to learn guitar scales. These scales provide a fantastic warm-up for lessons or practice sessions. Make sure you’re holding the frets down as you play. If you don’t, you are likely to make less-than-pleasant sounds.  In order to do this, it might prove advantageous to have your thumb positioned in the center of the neck.

Also, try to ensure that your wrist is not bent.  A bent wrist makes playing significantly more difficult. Your fingers must be relaxed and bent just a little so that they can easily flow up and down the guitar neck when you play scales.

Although we can’t go into sufficient detail here on how to learn guitar scales, there are some great online guitar learning programs out there. One of the best that I’ve seen is Learn and Master Guitar which is an excellent resource for learning guitar.

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