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Top 10 Most Important Scales for Guitar

By Klaus Crow 9 Comments

Top 10 Most Important Scales for Guitar

Scales serve many purposes. They will help you understand music, how to solo, improvise, analyze chords, chord progressions, songs and many other applications that will benefit and expand your musical ability.

You need to learn and practice scales thoroughly and then use them as a tool to create music. The amount of scales out there can be overwhelming for a lot of beginner and intermediate guitar players. So do you need to learn all the scales from this top 10? No, you only need to learn the scale(s) relevant to your style of music.

A lot of musicians only use one or two scales throughout their entire musical career. Depending on your skill level and musical aspirations very few or many scales will get you where you want to be.Continue Reading

The Awesome Harmonic Minor Scale

By Klaus Crow 13 Comments

Photo by Bigstock photo
The harmonic minor scale is often used in neo-classical, gypsy and jazz music.

But also rock guitar players like to step outside of the pentatonic or minor scale now and then and add this kind of middle eastern sound to their solos to keep things interesting.

It really catches the ear of the listener because something different and exciting is happening. John Petrucci, Joe Satriani and Marty Friedman are good examples of guitar players who incorporate the harmonic minor tastefully into their solos.

If you’re ready to add some cool flavor to play over a minor chord or dominant seventh chord then let’s dive into it:

Formulas
The harmonic minor scale contains 7 notes. The scale formula = 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7. So compared to the major scale (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) it’s got a minor third and a minor sixth.

The harmonic minor scale and the natural minor scale (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7) are pretty much the same expect the harmonic minor has raised it’s 7th by one semitone.

If you play an harmonic minor scale on a single string the pattern of whole and half steps are:
“whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole & a half, half”.
(half step = 1 fret, whole step = 2 frets, whole & a half = 3 frets)
So the formula in semitones = 2 1 2 2 1 3 1

 

 

Here’s how you play an A harmonic minor scale. The root note starting on the 6th string (Low E-string)

Here’s the harmonic minor scale starting on the 5th string (A-string): D harmonic minor scale.Continue Reading

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