Musical scale-up your soloing

If you’re a guitarist without a strong background in musical theory you might find that, once you’ve learned the minor pentatonic scale and can solo over a twelve-bar blues progression, you start to plateau and your guitar solos begin to sound the same.

I know mine certainly do, as I’m sure the lovely (and patient) people of Leith have started to notice…

Scalier than a rock-climbing iguana

If you’ve not bothered to make any resolutions this year, why not belatedly plan to learn a new musical scale once in a while?

If you’re in need of inspiration, take a look at this:

Now, even if that isn’t your thing, you can’t help but be impressed by the command of the scales and the knowledge of when to use them over which chords. If you’re not a melodic rocker or hard-core jazzer, that doesn’t mean that your playing won’t improve by learning an additional scale or two. What about adding some licks in the mixolydian or dorian modes to your blues solos, or learning that Arabic scale for those jam nights that head off into Middle Eastern-inspired sounds?

Build-a-box workshop

There are more online scale box generators than we can shake several pointy sticks at, such as Scalerator and the GuitarMasterclass Scale Generator, so if you’re happier learning from fingerboard diagrams than traditional notation, you’re covered. Even if you don’t use the exotic scales of the world that often in your solos, you might find that just practising some different scales to your usual ones is a good workout for finger dexterity and just for building your confidence in moving around the fretboard.

Now, with all this said of course, it’s all very well knowing all these notes, but choosing how to use them is perhaps more of the battle. Take a listen to Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl, guitar solo superb-ness, with just one note…