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Simple Beginner Guitar Lesson – How to Improve your solos with ascending Pivot Scales

By Mike Hayes | September 13, 2009

Practicing scales and licks on the guitar all day and hoping for
inspiration is one way to approach soloing; but I have a better
idea … how about training your mind to control your fingers so
that they play what you are hearing in your head?

Think about this for a moment, the music you hear in your head
does not sound like scales and boring exercises does it? In all
the time I have been playing the guitar no one has ever
requested a scale … so the public don’t want scales.

The problem is trying to overcome the bind we create when we
practice; the bind being “we play what we hear and we hear what we
play”. Translated, this means if all our ears hear is scales at
our practice sessions when we want to be creative all we’re
likely to play is scales.

What we need is a creative approach to guitar technique; things
that will sound like music right from the start … if we’re not
careful scales will ‘free our fingers and freeze our brains’.

Pivot scales:

A cool way to create interesting music that has lots of surprise
and intrigue is to use pivot scales.

Here’s how it works … I’m using a C major scale for our example.

C major scale – C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

Now if we played the C major scale in the note sequence
presented above it would be as ‘dull as dishwater’ because it’s a
familiar note pattern that’s very predictable, so no matter how
well it’s played or how fast the scale is performed the result will be  a boring exercise.

However, using the exact same scale if we selected two notes to
be our pivot point; two good notes to begin with would be the
notes B & C.

I’ve chosen these notes because they’re a semitone apart and the
semitone tends to galvanize the listener’s attention.

The idea is to begin with your pivot notes then proceed to play
your scale either ascending or descending using the pivot notes
constantly to begin each phrase.

Like this:

C-B-C-D / C-B-C-E / C-B-C-F / C-B-C-G / C-B-C-A / C-B-C-B / C-B-
C-C

In this example the last note ‘C’ is an octave higher than the
preceding C note.

Notice that the initial three notes C-B-C (pivot notes) where
used to set up a repetitive series of notes that the listener
becomes familiar with whilst the last note in each of the sequences is
simply an ascending C major scale.

That’s an interesting twist to a very familiar scale. Of course
you can create your pivot scale sequence with any two notes from
your chosen scale.

The semitone idea is a good way to design a strong melodic
phrase; the other semitone option in the key of C major would be
E & F.

Here’s a creative scale sequence using E & F as pivot notes.

F-E-F-G / F-E-F-A / F-E-F-B / F-E-F-C / F-E-F-D / F-E-F-E / F-E-
F-F

In this example the last note ‘F’ is an octave higher than the
preceding F note.

Try these ideas out in different keys and positions on the
fretboard next time you are practicing the guitar.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Fretboard, Guitar Tips | No Comments »

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