Presumably, it was a toy.

But the story never really said…

Anyhow, the police showed up and tried to taser the guy.

And get this – he defended himself by knocking the taser wires away with his lightsaber!

You just can’t make this kinda stuff up!

In fact, it reminded me of my friend who adamantly refused to accept the reality of scale patterns being helpful on the guitar.

I’ve talked about him before.

He’s the guy that could play kinda well, but never really knew what he was doing…

Hunting and pecking for the next notes in his guitar solos, “feeling” his way by ear.

Sure, it kinda worked for him, but its a bit like swinging a toy lightsaber…

It just isn’t going to get you that far!

He would have been so much better off today if he’d simply learned a couple basic scale patterns to help with his playing.

Then all his solos could have been anchored off a set of notes that he KNEW were ready for him.

He could have visualized his riffs right out of the patterns, rather than “feeling” whether he needed to go up one fret or two to the next good sounding note.

In short, it would have been like driving a car in an unfamiliar city WITH A NAVIGATOR beside him.

That’s what playing with scale patterns does for you.

Click Here To Learn Guitar Scale Patterns the Easy Way

Have I ever mentioned that if you try my course and don’t learn anything, I’ll give you a full refund?

Hmm, well I just thought I’d throw that out there again.

If you’re skeptical this patterns thing can help – then I’ve just taken away all the risk.

Click Here To Learn Guitar Scale Patterns the Easy Way

Give it a shot – it will take your playing up a notch.

A BIG notch.

“Is it necessary to learn every note on the fretboard?”

My answer to that is the classic: It Depends.

Because it does depend… on whether or not you want to play that thing very well!

If you’re content to only ever pick away at the guitar in a haphazard and half-hearted kind of way, then no, you don’t really need to learn all the notes.

In fact, probably just a handful of chords will do.

Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of people out there who can only play a few chords on the guitar and enjoy themselves quite nicely at that level. That’s cool.

But please don’t confuse that with KNOWING how to play WELL.

If you’ve ever wanted to get beyond that most basic of playing levels, then YES, you need to learn somethings about your instrument.

It’s like learning to drive standard, and asking if you need to know what the gear numbers mean.

Anyone who has ever driven standard will quickly agree with me that it makes a BIG difference if you shift into fifth by accident instead of second!

In a vehicle, not knowing the gears and their relation to each other could get you into an accident…

Thankfully, the stakes are lower with the guitar, but the principle is the same.

The notes on the fretboard aren’t mysterious secret agents, wearing black hats and running around changing position on you every time you pickup the guitar.

They’re all in order, and they stay in the same place!

On top of that, they’re arranged in patterns which makes it quick to learn a whole lot of scales in a very short time

… with very little memorization required.

Click Here: Learn Guitar Scale Patterns the Easy Way

If you’ve ever felt intimidated at the prospect of learning the fretboard…

Or perhaps you started once, only to quickly get confused and drop it shortly after…

Then take heart.

The fretboard CAN be learned.

It ISN’T rocket science.

And I’ve explained the whole thing in a nice easy-going two hour video, which you can find here.

Yeah, people say I’m easy going hehe

Over ‘n’ Out

Well, hopefully this video will answer those questions. If you’re still unclear afterwards, please leave a comment below.

The basic idea is recognizing which note in the scale pattern is your root note, and then to understand how when you shift the entire pattern to a different root note, that whole scale changes into a different key.

Moving Guitar Scales

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AataMJ_vEsA

If you’d like to download the worksheet I used in the video, you can do so here. (Right click on the link, and select save target as)

Don’t sweat it!

It’s okay!

We’ve all been there, at some point. The trick is to get past that point – ideally as quickly as possible!

Part of the issue I find is when the student hasn’t yet connected with the fact that scales can be looked at as PATTERNS.

When you approach the scale as a pattern, after a few times through you no longer need a cheat sheet to tell you where to put your finger next.

A bunch more times after that, your fingers are now starting to get the hang of the pattern, and after a while, you don’t need to be looking at the fretboard anymore either.

If you skip the pattern step though, you’re forever wondering where that next note is going to be…

Hey – nobody said the learning the guitar has to be complicated!

Speaking of…

Checkout my course on Guitar Scale PATTERNS!

It covers the scale patterns in every key, all over the fretboard, and although it comes with cheat sheets, the goal is to have you playing without them.

You’ll never again be at a loss as to where & what to play…

Well, for starters, there may be fewer lead guitar scales to choose from than you might be thinking there are! Many guitar teachers will tell you that you need to learn all seven modes, and learn how to solo in each of the seven.

Now I’m not going to argue that the modes are a valid way of looking at guitar scales; because clearly many great players have used this approach successfully.

However, I DO think that approaching the guitar with a modes-based mentality is outdated, and that there is a more efficient way.

Modes came out of classical piano theory, and they work great on the piano.

The problem comes when people go about applying piano theory to guitar theory…

Clearly, the guitar fretboard is a vastly different environment than the piano keyboard. So, picking lead guitar scales to play with should work differently as well.

In the Guitar Scale Patterns course, I teach just three main positions to solo from, and by using these three positions (patterns) you can very effectively cover the entire fretboard in every key.

Specifically, the two most important scales off the 6th string (I call this Root 6): the major scale and the relative minor scale. The third pattern I use is nearly identical to the Root 6 relative minor, it is the Root 5 relative minor. You’re actually playing the exact same notes as the relative minor scale, you’re just starting in a different place.

I don’t know about you, but personally I far prefer only having to remember three lead guitar scales than seven!

Lead Guitar Scales – Which to Choose?

So, let’s get back to the original question: which of the lead guitar scales should we use when soloing?

With just three options to choose from, this becomes a much simpler question to answer. Typically, I will make my selection based on where I want to be playing on the fretboard. If I want to start off the solo in the lower range, then I pick the relevant pattern that is represented in the lower part of the fretboard, and often towards the end of a solo, I will end up in the higher regions, in a different pattern. There are various ways of connecting these scales, which I get into in the course.

My all time favorite of the lead guitar scales is the relative minor pattern (root 6); the minor scale is simply beautiful on the guitar both for its sound and how the fingerings line up. The minor scale is easier to solo with than the major scale, even though many people teach you to solo using the major scale.

If you find the fretboard complicated and confusing, then you really need to checkout the Guitar Scale Patterns course. Choosing lead guitar scales does not have to be a complicated process; it can be intuitive and straightforward, if you approach it right.

If you want to know what Dave is talking about, you can find the Guitar Scale Patterns course here. You’ll never approach lead guitar scales the same again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHk-cwn4sIc

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The scale in this video is the minor pentatonic scale, and the scale pattern for it is below. The numbers represent your fingers; index being 1, pinky being 4. The red note is the root, and the others are octaves of that same note.

E:  |–1–|—–|—–|–4–| — 1st string
B:  |–1–|—–|—–|–4–|
G:  |–1–|—–|–3–|—–|
D:  |–1–|—–|–3–|—–|
A:  |–1–|—–|–3–|—–|
E:  |–1–|—–|—–|–4–| — 6th string

The tab starts at the 5th fret (Am Pentatonic position)

You can see the whole fretboard in the diagram on the right. The red notes are the root notes. Try to get used to seeing how the scale repeats itself. Every time you see a red note, that’s the octave, and it means the scale is starting over again.

The Next Step

If this pentatonic scale has shown you a small glimpse of what is possible with scales and patterns on your guitar, then go checkout the Guitar Scale Patterns lesson.

Before you stop and say “But a 2 hour lesson on scales?? B-O-R-I-N-G!” consider that plenty of people have written to tell me that these patterns are making a difference in their playing that they never though possible before.

Once you begin to see how the guitar works, it becomes far from boring to learn about the fretboard – in fact, I bet you become as amazed at the fretboard as I am!

Click Here For The Scale Patterns Guitar Lesson

To explain these very simply; the boxes you see on the free cheat sheet you downloaded indicate different places where you can play the scale.

In the video below, I demonstrate a connecting pattern that you can use to move in between three different box patterns. This connecting pattern, or run, is super handy because you can start your solo down in the lower registers, then move it up the neck to really build things up. It’s easy to play, and sounds really cool.

In the Guitar Scale Patterns lesson I teach this particular run in much more detail than you’ll see below, but I wanted to give you an idea of what you can do with the patterns.

Click Here To Get The Guitar Scale Patterns Lesson Now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3FeAR1Z2Mk

When you’ve got this pattern stuck in your brain, it saves you the need to memorize all of the notes on the fretboard, which, to be honest, is a fair amount of memorization.

Why not take advantage of the pattern, and do less than half the work?

As you’ll see in this short video, that’s very possible.

The octave pattern is just one of the many patterns that I teach in the full Guitar Scale Patterns lesson. In that lesson you’ll learn how the entire fretboard is covered in patterns, and how you can use those patterns to speed up your guitar playing, and reduce the brainpower needed to create licks and solos! Playing by pattern is much easier than reading music!

Questions? Comments? Leave one below the video….

Click Here To Get The Guitar Scale Patterns Lesson Now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NquSb2J9X8k

As you can see, there are four different scale patterns shown in boxes. E major is shown both in open position as well as at the 12th fret in the standard box shape.

In orange you will see all of the E’s marked on the fretboard. Pay close attention, because this is an important pattern (the octave).

Download the Cheat Sheet

(Right click on the link and select ‘Save Target As’)

Basically, each box represents a spot where you can play the scale in the key of E. These are all diatonic – not pentatonic. I’ll explain the difference there in another post.

Click Here To Get The Guitar Scale Patterns Lesson Now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXh23elOfWo

IMPORTANT:

If you’re just getting started with guitar scales, its quite possible this cheat sheet might be a bit over your head. I go into quite a bit of detail on the patterns on this sheet, as well as many more in the Guitar Scale Patterns lesson. It is over 2 hours of video, going into detail on the different patterns that are on the guitar fretboard – why they’re there, how to find them, and most importantly, how to use them.

Click Here To Get The Guitar Scale Patterns Lesson Now