Guitar scales are helpful for any guitar player. Regular guitar scale practice can help develop your, build speed and dexterity, and help build a roadmap of your fretboard. For some beginning guitar players practicing seems like a chore, but it doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of ways to practice your guitar scales without overdoing it and without boring yourself to tears.
Rather than hammer away at a scale and nothing else, use scales as a warm-up to playing songs and just jamming. Scales are an excellent way to loosen up your fingers. When you’re working on scales, limit yourself to one or two at a time and make sure you have them down before you try to add another one. Start with your major scale and your natural minor scale (which starts on the sixth note of the major scale) and learn those first. Plot them out on your guitar and play the patterns from the lowest position to the highest, then reverse the order.
Once you have the fingerings down, it’s time to switch it up. If you keep playing the scales in note order you’ll not only get bored, you won’t really learn anything. Rarely will you play scales in note order when you’re playing music, so why focus on playing this way when you practice? Skip around within the positions and combine them to create licks instead of scales. This teaches you real-world application of scales. That doesn’t mean you can’t play the scale in sequential order. That’s still a great way to work on your speed and help strengthen your fingers.
Check out this GUITAR LESSON USING THE DIMINISHED SCALE
Once you’ve mastered the major and minor scales you can add the pentatonic scales or the blues scale and plot them on your fretboard the same way you did the major and minor. When you start playing these scales you’ll find that they are already very familiar to you because you’ve committed the major and minor scales to memory and all other scales are derived from these scales. That’s the reason we always start guitar scale practice with the major and minor scales.
If you want to go deeper with scales and lead playing, I recommend you to check out our:
BEST SELLING LEAD GUITAR COURSE
Once you have the fingerings down, it’s time to switch it up. If you keep playing the scales in note order you’ll not only get bored, you won’t really learn anything. Rarely will you play scales in note order when you’re playing music, so why focus on playing this way when you practice? Skip around within the positions and combine them to create licks instead of scales. This teaches you real-world application of scales. That doesn’t mean you can’t play the scale in sequential order. That’s still a great way to work on your speed and help strengthen your fingers.
Check out this GUITAR LESSON USING THE DIMINISHED SCALE
Once you’ve mastered the major and minor scales you can add the pentatonic scales or the blues scale and plot them on your fretboard the same way you did the major and minor. When you start playing these scales you’ll find that they are already very familiar to you because you’ve committed the major and minor scales to memory and all other scales are derived from these scales. That’s the reason we always start guitar scale practice with the major and minor scales.
If you want to go deeper with scales and lead playing, I recommend you to check out our:
BEST SELLING LEAD GUITAR COURSE 
