Scales and Solo

Scales do not help much with producing a good solo, and most guitarists in their early years who have spent a lot of time practicing scales often complain that their solos don't sound as good as their favourite guitarists, and that they feel like the scale shapes are boxing them in and forcing their solo to take a certain path that sounds boring.

This is because the basic approach most people take to scales is "here is a list of 7 notes which sound good in this key". But it's not simply a case of 7 notes that sound equally good and the other 5 that sound equally bad.

For example take the Cmaj scale over a Cmaj7 chord. Notes of the scale are C D E F G A B, notes of the chord are C E G B.

Each note in the scale has a different job, and its own relationship to the notes in the chord. For example the C note functions as the tonic, and so if you hit that, you're going to sound right all day.

The G functions as the 5th, which is the next most consonent note you can play over Cmaj7.

The note G functions as the third, which does the job of telling us whether we're listening to a major or minor chord, and in this case it's a major 3rd. This is the next most consonent note you can hit, and arguably the third is the most "melodic" note to target.

The B functions as the 7th, which tells us that the chord had a jazzy quality to it. It's the least consonent note in the chord because it's only a half step away from the root, and half steps are always dissonant.

Then you have the other 3 notes of the Cmaj scale which are not in the a Cmaj chord. The D functions as a major 2nd, the F as a perfect 4th and the A as the 6th. Each, again, has its own special quality over the Cmaj chord, but none are likely to sound as strong as the actual chord tones, so try them all slowly and see what they sound like and what you like best.

So scales provide some structure for you, but you must be making intelligent choices within that structure to actually sound like you know what you're doing, and not just like another robot guitarist running up and down a scale. You're supposed to be playing the scales, not letting the scales play you.

/r/guitarlessons Thread