By Nicholas Anderson
I’ll admit it. Scales are boring. The process of learning scales is often tedious, frustrating, and takes too long. The good news is that learning scales does not have to be a long, drawn out process where you seem to get it one day only to forget it the next.
With the following strategy, you can learn a scale much faster than the typical method of playing it thousands of times before it finally “sticks.” This strategy uses multiple ways of learning to help retain the information. Do every step exactly as they are laid out and you will find it much easier to memorize any scale.
1. Before you even pick up the guitar, you need to write the scale on staff, TAB and guitar neck writing paper. If you don’t read music, that’s ok, you can just write in down in TAB and on guitar neck paper. Write the scale 3-5 times in for each type of notation.
2. Next, SAY OUT LOUD the notes of the scale on each string going up and down the scale (either the fret numbers of the actual note names, do both if you can).
3. After writing down the scale, pick up the guitar and try to visually see the scale. See every note on each string. This will probably be difficult to do at first. That’s ok, it will get easier. Do this every time you intend to practice the scale you’re working on. Notice that you still have not actually played the scale yet. This is on purpose, because playing the scale wrong is what we want to avoid.
4. Now close your eyes and visualize playing the scale. If you’ve never tried to visualize playing the guitar, it may be difficult at first. If it is too difficult, you may skip this step. However, visualization is a powerful tool to help learn new material. It is well worth the time and effort.
5. Now it’s time to actually play the scale! But not how you think 🙂 First, play the scale only with your fretting hand. Don’t worry about the picking hand yet. You should only concentrate on the fretting hand so that your full attention is given to the notes in the scale. Do this 3-5 times SLOWLY. Don’t rush this. If you get confused about where the notes are, stop and look at the scale written out on paper. After you’ve playing through the scale 3-5 times, add the picking hand (you may also want to play the scale with only the picking hand, but that addresses a different problem altogether).
6. Repeat steps 1-5 this on a daily basis (or more often, but not less) until the scale is totally memorized and you don’t have to think about the notes as you play through it.
It is very important that you do this on a daily basis. Memorizing anything requires frequent repetition. If you fail to do this daily, you will cause the process of memorization to take much longer. However, even if you do skip a day here and there, this method still enable you to memorize any scale much faster than simply playing it over and over until it eventually sticks.
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