Why Most Guitarists Never Benefit From Scale Practice - 473

The Frustration of Scale Practice

0:00Welcome, friends, to the Play Guitar Podcast. I'm Lee. I'm here to help you become the guitar player that you always wanted to be. I've said that a lot. Close to 500 times.

0:16And you do these things for a while, and every once in a while you have a milestone. And today's a milestone day. I'm going to talk about that at the end of the episode. But now, we're going to talk a little bit about something that's been plaguing a lot of people. Today I want to talk about a frustrating reality that affects every guitar player. All of us. You've learned scales. You've practiced your scales. Scales are important, right? We know that. Chords and scales. And rhythm. Those are the three sides of the musical triangle.

0:54So, you've been practicing these scales, and you've spent hours running the patterns up and down the neck, and you can do it real good.

1:03Unless you're showing somebody, and then it's not so good. But when you sit down to improvise, it's time to use these things. So, maybe you're playing over a backing track, or you're jamming with your band, or you're just trying to come up with something. It doesn't feel like that practice did much. It didn't translate into better playing. Yes, you can play those notes, and yes, you can go up and down. But what's coming out when you need it is not what you would like.

1:37If that sounds familiar, I know it does, because I've lived it, you're not alone. The problem usually isn't that you need more of this. Do I need more scales? Do I need more? I can play them perfectly. Where do I go from here? The problem is that most guitar players are practicing these scales in a way that doesn't have a whole lot of musical benefit. That's important. Today, I'm going to share the reasons, I think, why scale practice really falls flat, and what you can do differently if you want to actually play well and get results.

2:18Okay? What are you doing when you're playing scale patterns? Think about it. Well, here, if you're watching this, let's go to... There we go. This is from the Blues Elevation Toolkit. It's from the vault, where we have all the scales and all the keys and all the positions, and I just picked A Major Blues Scale for this week. A Major Blues Pattern 1, well, it has a shape to it, right? And we use those shapes to help us remember these things.

2:52The problem is, those shapes, they're doing something else. They're allowing you to run up and down something like it's a vehicle, right? Your scale practice becomes visual. If you think about it, when you think about the A minor pentatonic scale, boom, I know exactly what you're thinking. I can see what you're seeing. It's the box. It's right there.

3:231-4-1-3-1-3-1-3-1-4-1-4. We all know that, right? It's important. It's in a lot of songs.

3:30We memorize boxes.

3:33Shapes, right? We memorize fingerings. First finger, fourth finger, first finger, third finger. These are the things that we're spending our time on. We're memorizing the different positions. Oh, well, pattern one goes into pattern two. And these are all incredibly important. So important that I take it to the extreme in the beginning. Why not learn the whole neck of the guitar instead of just one? Because I've seen people getting stuck by just knowing one pattern for years and years and years.

4:07I tried to break that habit in the beginning. These are very important. Why? These are the things that we're going to use to make music with. But in the beginning, it's mechanics, right? Where do my fingers go? How hard do I play these? How fast do I play them? Which pattern is this? What fret do I start on? All this is, I know, is familiar to you. All of it.

Scales as Shapes Versus Sound

4:37What's missing? Well, what I just said. Playing these in a musical way. The ear gets left behind. We don't talk about what they sound like. We don't talk about how we're going to use them. I think we just start to play them over backing tracks and you're just expected to hear it. Well, not all of us hear that right away. I know I didn't. It took me a while, right? My ear didn't develop until later. It took me years to really feel like I had a handle on these things.

5:13These notes that we're supposed to play that are going to build our chords and use our scales and create melodies and allow us to play the music that we love, those notes don't have any meaning in the beginning. They're just a stop on the map, right? The music starts off as geometry, right? Do you ever see a beautiful mind when he's doing equations? And I just recognize all sorts of guitar shapes in that little animation that was representing the way that Russell Crowe thought about those things.

5:51But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help as many people as I can from wasting decades of this. A scale is more than a pattern.

6:07These notes have functions. When you start to go up and down these scale patterns so fast, you're blazing past gold. Every single one of these notes, it has an interval function with them. They have a quality to them depending on the key that you're in. Some notes feel stable. Some notes have tension. Some notes create release.

6:38These are things that make people feel a certain way. Your notes can make people feel a certain way. You all know, if you've listened to this, you all know that that gig that I had, that was a pretty important gig. And I played one note by accident and just let it ring. And it was the thing that did it did everything. You know, I hit the right note with the right at the right timing with the right tension. And I created an emotional response with it. But what you're doing is powerful.

7:08And we are just going past it. Another story that I bring up is, what if you were on a trip with your family and you're driving 80 miles an hour down the highway. And everybody says, hey, we want Chinese food. Yeah, that would be great. And as you're driving 90 miles down the highway, at each off-ramp, you see Chinese food. And there's, oh, there's Chinese. Well, you just keep blowing past them, right? There are musical ideas that need to be explored with this.

7:44And the key to this is your ear. Your ear, knowing the patterns, right? And having, making some decisions along with that, too. Some notes create release. But what, what gives everything meaning? Well, it's, it's the strong note. The strongest, the tonic. Could be the root of the chord that's being played at the time. The one chord.

8:14The home, right? That gives meaning to everything. It provides resolution. It creates context. All of the other intervals are related to the tonic. In the key of A, it would be the A. If you play a C, that is a minor third away from your root note, your tonic note.

8:39Some people hear this instinctively. I didn't right away, but I did. I knew it was the root. I knew it was the strong note. But I didn't know how the other notes related to it. Some, some players hear destination. They hear movement. They hear relationships. I'm trying to get you to think about destination, movement, and relationships. If you hadn't, didn't hear it right away, this is a great day for you because you can do this.

9:14I didn't, and now I do. I worked hard at it, and I know you'll work hard. You wouldn't be listening to this if you weren't a hard worker. People who just want to just play guitar by how they feel, they're not listening to this at all, right? They're saying, hey, I've got a problem. I'm frustrated. I need to figure this out.

Emphasizing the Root Note

9:34So what are we going to do instead? Well, we're going to listen. And when are you playing? Well, when you're practicing. Well, what are you doing? Well, I noodle around, and I just kind of jam the things that I know. Well, you're not listening, right? Let's listen while we practice. Let's develop the ear. Let's kill two birds with one stone. Now, we're not just going to watch the fingers. We're going to pay attention to the sound, and we get to start one step at a time, and

10:11that is emphasizing the root note, and that is what we're doing in the training dojo this week is dealing with the root note. This is the big, big thing we're working on, right? All right, what's the easiest thing to do to emphasize? Well, if I'm playing, let's see here. Let's go back over to the sheet here. If I'm playing A major blues, pattern one. Well, if I played that just up and down, the way I'm playing right here, it's hard to hear

10:57what the strongest note is. It could be any of them. It could be F sharp, which would make this a minor blues skip.

11:07In fact, it could be any of these notes that could be the strong notes. We have to tell this scale what the strong note is. So what I'm going to do is whenever I hit the A, because this is an A scale, and we're playing over A chords, a chord progression in A, I'm going to emphasize it. Now, I've chosen to emphasize it by letting it last longer than the other. But you've got to do something to make it different, make it special compared to all

11:40the other notes. And then, all of a sudden, something happens. That was very different than the first time I... I don't hear anything there, but...

12:13Oh, I hear a lot of things going on with that. Letting it ring longer. Now I can hear weak notes and strong notes. Now I can hear the resolution. Now I can hear the sound of home.

12:33Go to your home. Right? We're training our ears every time we play a scale. How often do you play a scale? Probably, pretty... Hopefully, you know, more than not. Right?

12:48If you do it this way, this super simple thing, just making the root note last, or the tonic note last longer than all the rest, your hearing is going to be developing along with your visuals. Okay? You're going to be paying attention to this. It makes you become aware of the strong note. It makes you realize that every other note, doesn't matter what it is, is weaker than that

13:19note. Your awareness is going to increase. And this isn't just awareness. This is musical understanding. I understand where I'm going to release this tension that's being played by notes that may or may not even be in the scale. Right? There's weaker notes. You have degrees. You have the strong note. You have the chord notes, which are all strong. You have notes in scale that are not in the chord, which are weaker.

13:52And then you have wrong notes, which are the weakest. Right? But they're all usable. One's not any better than the other. We need all of them together to make some really cool stuff. Okay? So, one thing. Play the root note longer than everything else.

Practicing Scales With Harmony

14:09Section number two. You're practicing without context. Another thing that I really take a moment with people I'm helping is when I find out that they're practicing their scales and they're not practicing them over some sort of harmony or some sort of a chord, static chord or chord progression. Real music contains harmony. Even if you're a solo performer, you're playing over a perceived harmony.

14:43Right? Songs have progressions. One chord goes to the next, goes to the next. Solos happen. Melodies happen. Where?

14:55Over what? Chords. What we're playing has importance because of the chord that's playing behind it. These notes exist within a context.

15:11The chord changes the way these notes sound. Now, they are being related to something that is kind of the foundation. You're hearing how these notes sound over stronger notes or strong notes. The chords change. The strong notes change when the chord notes change. The way you play has to change when the chords change.

15:41Different chord. Different feeling. Notes are in a different context. And context creates meaning. Just, especially like this. Say we're in A. Right?

15:57And say we're going to a four chord. Usually that's a very common. A going to D. Right?

16:04Well, say our melody note is an A.

16:12Okay? Now I can play that A again.

16:18Over the D chord. It's a totally different function. Over the A chord, it's the one. It's solid. That's an ending note. Over the D chord, that's the fifth. It's a nice note, but it's not the final note. That creates tension because it wants to go back to five chords, four chords. They all go through with progression and end up at one at some point. The harmony matters.

16:49The function matters. The relationships on these things matter. When you practice without harmony, just you playing up and down the scale, you're leaving a lot of important things on the table, we'll say. There's only limits to what you're getting with this. Scales in isolation are incomplete. It's great for mechanics. You can just breeze through your scales. It's great for memorizing because you can focus on the shapes. But for being musical, you're limiting yourself.

17:22You're not challenging your ear at all, right? You're just playing notes up and down. These are a collection of notes there. There's no harmony being exposed. There's no movement going from one strong note to the next or going from a weak note to a strong note. These are the things people pick up on. There's no interaction. And so, you growing as a musician, you're not going to grow as fast as you could.

17:57The way you would succeed as a musician is going to take longer. You're going to be less aware than you could be. You're going to know less about phrasing, right? You're going to know less about expressing yourself, what to do with these things. You're going to know less about what to practice. What do I practice next? Well, I've done my scales. I know them. What do I do now? Right? So, something as simple as letting the root note last longer than the other notes is like putting your foot on the right road finally, right?

18:38It's starting off on a good trip, right? So, what are we going to do instead? We're going to use backing tracks.

18:47That's the best way to do this. You can use a loop pedal as well too, right? But we're going to practice with something to listen to and compare the notes that we're playing along with this sort of harmony. Okay? We're going to practice with context. Practice musically. And we're going to listen. Hear the chord movement. So, I have here this week, we were doing a vamp.

19:20So, I love using a vamp. Especially when you're learning a new scale. Because what happens is when you have a chord change, when your one chord goes to something else, all your strong notes and weak notes change. But if it stays on that one chord, it gives you time to get used to what each of these scale notes can do. Right? So, here, let's go to the backing track here.

19:56Now, I'm going to go to the next note. If I played this B note over the A, not much, right? Does it want to go up or does it want to go down? Listen. I'm hearing up. But it could have been just as well.

20:18Could have gone down. Right?

20:22That's what it sounds like over top of this chord.

20:26Over top of the root.

20:29Now, there's an A. This is all an A chord. There's that B again. Tension. Wants to come.

20:50A lot of tension.

20:58So, here I'm going to do my practicing now. All I was doing.

21:30What I was doing there was going up and down the scales. But I was allowing some time to hit those really tense notes so you could hear. We need that A. We need that root to come in. Hearing this note functions. Turning scale practice into ear training. Something you can do every single day. It's going to... If you keep listening to what you're playing, you're going to start to be able to compare sounds in your practice to the sounds you hear on records, on tapes and records, on Spotify, in a live band.

22:06Right? You're going to start to build awareness. Hey, that sounds just like when I play this thing.

Activity Versus Actual Progress

22:11So, another problem that people are having is that they're measuring their activity on the guitar instead of actual progress on the guitar. Running scales feels like you're doing something. You're busy. You're focused. You're trying to remember those things. You're practicing. But that practicing, it gets you to a certain point, but then you don't improve past that point. You can keep running those scales, but if you're not using them for something, you're missing the whole point of it.

22:44Right? Activity isn't improvement. Repetition alone isn't enough. I think about the 10,000 hour rule. Right? You'll master the guitar in 10,000 hours. That... I have seen that with my own eyes. I've seen people who've played much more than 10,000 hours, and I can guarantee you they have not mastered the guitar. Okay? Time alone isn't enough. If you practice something wrong for long enough, you'll get really good at practicing or playing that wrong. Right?

23:14So, just forget about the effort so much. We need some intention. Intention will lessen the amount of effort that you have to put in. And you'll get better results from that. Having clear goals. Having a clear focus. And having a clear outcome. These are the things I'm trying to bring to you every week. Clear focus. Clear outcomes. What real progress looks like. So, when you're playing and you're creating melodies or bass lines or guitar solos, the line...

23:51You're playing saxophone. Right? You're making... What are you doing? You're making decisions. You're choosing what note to play when. These are all little mini decisions that you're playing. And sometimes you don't feel like making a decision. Sometimes you just feel like, I'm just going to play the same thing I always play because I know it works. And then you're just in that lane. Right? Better note choices bring more confidence and more purpose to what you're playing. More musicality.

24:23It can open up your guitar phrases like you wouldn't believe. Right? All of a sudden you're playing something that fits the song. Your ideas are stronger. And you don't have that look like, I hope this is going to work out. You know, at a minimum, this is going to work. Right? You can get stronger ideas. Better endings. Better expression. Better listening and hearing resolution and tension. Just from playing your scales a certain way.

24:54So a better question about all this is how do I stop playing like this? Right? How many scales do I have to know? How fast do I have to play? How many patterns have I memorized? Start asking yourself, well, who cares about all that? It's good. It gets you actively opening up the neck of the guitar. But a real question to ask yourself is can I hear the tonic? Can I hear the chord changes? Can I hear that one of my notes leads me into the next chord?

25:28Can I hear where phrases want to resolve? Those are the measures that we want to work out. That measures musical growth. Which comes from having better ears. Which is what we're starting to work on today. Better ears. Better phrasing. Phrasing. Better musicianship. It's been a long day. If you're not getting results from your scale practice, the answer probably isn't learning a new scale. It's probably a different approach. Stop treating scales as finger exercises and start treating them as musical sounds.

26:03All you got to do is listen for the tonic. And practice over some tracks and pay attention to how each note functions over those chords. The goal of scale practice isn't to learn where the notes are. It's to learn what the notes sound like. And once you start hearing the scale instead of playing the pattern, that's when scale practice starts producing real results.

A Milestone and New Academy Chapter

26:24This is a little bit of a milestone for me. A new chapter is coming along in the Play Guitar Academy. 2018, I started podcasting. And I didn't have the academy set up. I had a few free giveaways and those things. But my intention was to be a podcaster. And I didn't really want to do YouTube because even then I saw what, you know, some of the negatives of that.

27:02I wanted to have people who really wanted to learn, who were actively wanting to learn. And so I just podcasted for a while. And at some point, podcasting got to, you know, it got, that's basically as far as it's going to go. Podcasting is like that. Unless you're a Joe Rogan or something like that. You get your crowd and people come in and people go out. But, um, and it's very solid and it's been great. And I appreciate all, there's a lot of people been listening since then. Um, but then I started doing YouTube and the, the, uh, the academy was built and, and, uh, trying different things.

27:38And, and, uh, everything started to, uh, point in, in a direction that I wasn't really, I really wanted to help people who are frustrated with all sorts of guitar, not just blues and those things. Um, so we have a whole new, uh, period with the guitar and, and, and it actually occurred at the same time, uh, when we've gotten 40,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 4 million downloads. So it's all kind of happening around some force, right?

28:13But it's, it's, it's, uh, we have a whole new system. Um, the academy is about to become the academy training dojo, a place where you go to practice, kind of like a gym or, or a dojo, right? It's a place where you go to work things out and it's easy to go there and you can focus and you have the, the, uh, things you need to play there. So this is the first in, um, the whole new series of content that's going to actually help frustrated, frustrated guitar players play.

28:48And whatever the theme of the week is, is what's the, what's going to be put out there, uh, in, um, on YouTube and on audio podcast. And it's also going to be the main part of what we all practice together inside the academy. Now in the academy, we get a lot more than that. I'm going to have structure for everyone in the training dojo every week. I'm going to have a whole practice set up, uh, for you where we hit all the important things. We don't leave anything behind. Uh, the featured is going to be, uh, the main topic.

29:21And this one is hearing the strong note in scales and we'll have things that beginners can do and things that intermediates can do in advance. So we all practice along together, kind of like a jam where you might have somebody who's been playing for a long time. And somebody is a beginner, all playing the same song. We're all practicing these together. We're going to have, um, challenges where people can show what they've worked on there and, uh, talk to each other about these things. And, uh, it's all starting to happen. And now it's going to happen slow and in the beginning, I'm going to just, you know, it's going to get fancier and fancier as we go.

29:57Uh, but there's no time like the present to get started. So I'm just going to put up something to get everybody practicing together first. And then we have some really, really cool ideas to make sure that you love coming back into the academy and, and practicing along with me. So practicing and knowing, Hey Lee, what do I practice next? I hear that a lot and that's, it's going to answer that. So, um, so there's going to be some changes in that. And a lot of the people in, not right now, but coming soon, uh, when you buy a toolkit, uh, you'll get invited to come into the academy.

30:30It's going to be a little bit different right now. There's been, we've had a trial and that's all going away. Uh, so it's going to be, uh, but for people who are already in it, don't worry about it. You're in, you're in just how you are right now, but, uh, uh, things are going to change moving forward. Uh, so I'm excited about this. This is a new chapter and, uh, and it's actually working out the way now the AI has, has appeared. And, uh, there's a lot of information for free out there, which I put my information out for free as well, too.

31:03Um, the important thing is going to be results. And we all know now just having more information doesn't mean results. And I've always been about this, helping you become the guitar player that you always wanted to be results, not just acquiring more lessons. Right. How do we put this into practice? So we start to feel like we're playing in a way that, uh, that we needed to, you know? So I'm looking forward to it.

31:33And, uh, we're going to start slow. Like I said, this week we have the topic and then, um, today's podcast gets into it. And then if you're in the academy swing by there on Wednesday, we're going to have, we're going to start practicing together. Uh, we're going to have, I think I'm going to put up a challenge and a basic sheet. That's got, you know, the lesson I have and the resources we need. Um, and then next week, it'll be a little bit fancier. And the week after that, a little bit fancier and fancier. And it's going to get, it's going to be fun. Okay. Okay. Well, here we go. I haven't done a half hour long podcast in a long time.

32:05This was enjoyable and exciting. And I look forward to seeing you all next week. Okay. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.