Guitar Lesson Number Two – A Dose of Reality

Practical Guitar Lessons

Guitar Lessons You Can Use

Guitar Lesson Number Two – A Dose of Reality

If you are a reader who has never taken a guitar lesson in person from anyone (and even if you have, depending), it would behoove you to locate some scales online and print them off. Put them in a three-ring binder labeled ‘Guitar Lessons’. Scales can be found all over the internet either in standard music notation, tab or as dots on a guitar fingerboard. I like the dots-on-fingerboard approach since that shows the pattern pretty well.

If you take guitar lessons from someone, you will probably be introduced to one scale at a time. On internet guitar lessons (I’m talking free online guitar lessons here), you can easily be overwhelmed with the amount of scale patterns available. It doesn’t matter whether you print off one or ten as a starting point for your ‘Guitar Lesson’ book. It does take time for your fingers to be programmed with the scale pattern so you may find that even though you have a ton of material from on-line guitar lessons, you will still have to approach it at a real-time guitar lesson pace.

Some scales that are good to look for are major, minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, blues pentatonic. The good thing about the dots-on-fingerboard charts is that they show the pattern which can be played anywhere along the neck.

If you really want to be good, it will be good to practice these patterns slowly up and down using a metronome. You can speed this up by turning the metronome up a notch over time, but don’t be too concerned at first if you are not hitting lightening speeds. The good thing about this approach is that you don’t have to pay while you practice and get some basic scales under your fingers.

Take your guitar to the lake and sit under a tree and practice scales. If you get bored, play them at different locations on the neck. People tend to complain about playing scales. Some guitar lessons may not even include scales or only with more advanced guitar lessons. But a little goes a long way with scales, and as it does take time to get your fingers to automatically play a scale run, it is good to get started early. If you get to your advanced level guitar lessons, and you are just starting to play scales, then you are starting from scratch.

If you did nothing other than play scales in your bedroom all day for years and never took a guitar lesson, you would be surprised at how good you would get. If you’re like me you can’t play all day since you are working to make money (maybe for guitar lessons). In that case you will have to spread it out over time which is all the more reason to start as soon as possible.

Rainy days are great for playing scales. Or would you rather drive to a guitar lesson in the rain?

Beautiful days are even better. Would you rather sit by the lake or in a small room for your guitar lesson?

Make sure you play the scales up and down. You may find scale patterns that go all the way up the neck. This is good, but to start why not just stay in one position. You can play it at different locations on the neck, but don’t worry too much about moving your hand up the neck during the scale. Leave shifting your hand up the neck as you ascend the scale to later guitar lessons.

That’s enough for now. Hope you enjoyed this guitar lesson. In future guitar lessons, I’ll touch on fun things to do with your scales to make it even more fun.

Thanks for reading Practical Guitar Lessons!