Age of Aquarius

When you improvise guitar solos, the ideal thing is that your left hand moves freely across the fingerboard. That way, the flexibility in which you weave your phrases out of the scale will increase. But before getting there, you need to use the concept of "positions" and practice accordingly.

You pick up a scale, and then divide the fingerboard into segments consisting of 4 or 5 frets. We call those segments "positions". You're going to memorize all the notes in the positions. A diatonic scale renders 7 positions on the fingerboard, and there are 17 notes in a position. Let's name each position after the lowest note in it, and we'll have 7 names such as "Do position", "Re position", "Mi position", etc. Here, the "Do", "Re", "Mi" subscribe to the so-called "Movable Do" principle. It's not that Do is C and Re is D, and so on. For instance, in the E diatonic scale, E is the Do. Therefore, if I take the E diatonic and see the position whose lowest note is E, I'll call it the "Do position of E diatonic". (By the way, these names (Do position, etc) are what I personally came up with, so excuse me if you can't make yourself understood using them elsewhere. Also, if you're from a non-English-speaking country like I am, you may wonder what the "Ti" in the image means. It means Si.)

I'll list some scale exercises below, and I'll use the E diatonic scale to show examples. All of these should be accompanied by either a metronome or a drum track. Play them in various tempos - from slow to fast - and in various pulses such as quarter notes, 8th notes, quarter triplets and 8th triplets. If you have a tool that can play background chords for you, that'll be great because you'll be able to nurture your harmonic feel. If you don't, you should record yourself playing the chords along with the metronome or the drum track, and use the recording when practicing scales. If you are to practice the E diatonic, pick the E or E?7 chords. That's an extra job to do, but it'll reward you a lot in the long run. Use the same method for whatever exercises you do, and your development as a guitarist will be much faster than if you don't. Besides, you'll also improve faster as a musician in a bigger sense.

Every exercise listed here is meant to help you work your fingers, as well as memorize the notes. So, when you find yourself going somewhat smoother, try playing them without looking at the diagram or the TAB. Even if you stutter a bit, you'll be learning more efficiently when you're trying to use your memory proactively than when you merely read/play what is written in front of you.

(1) First, begin with an exercise where you go up from the lowest note of a position to the highest, and come down. Go up 17 notes, which is an equivalent of 2 octaves and a 3rd, and go down.
If it's the position starting with Do, you'll ascend "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Re Mi", and you descend. This image shows the "Do position" of the E diatonic scale. On the fingerboard, it's located at the area closest to the neck. The lowest note of this position is E, the open 6th string. The highest is G#, the 4th fret of the 1st string. The notes marked with a white circle are Do, or E. But the ones marked with a thin-lined white circle are merely open-string notes, an example of which is the open 5th string in the image. (The horizontal lines are strings and the vertical are frets. The lowest line is the 6th string and the leftmost double line is the 0 fret.)

(2) Next, do an exercise where you go up two notes and down a note, and repeat the movement. Here, "going up two notes" means skipping a note on the way, like going up from Do to Mi. The movement will look like "Do Mi, Re Fa, Mi So.." This exercise takes nearly twice as long to reach the highest note as the previous one. When you reach the top, you come down in the style of going down 2 steps and up a step. "Mi Do, Re Ti, Do La.." If you click-enlarge the image, you'll see the whole action. This is a TAB notation. When you're used to the pattern, you should switch to either looking at diagrams (like shown in the previous paragraph) or not looking at anything at all.

(3) Then there's an exercise that makes you ascend with a set of three notes. Go up two notes and come down one note, and repeat that move. Like "Do Re Mi, Re Mi Fa, Mi Fa So.." When you reach the peak, start descending in the form of going down two notes and up a note. Like "Mi Re Do, Re Do Ti, Do Ti La.." This is a three-note movement, so it can easily be played in triplets. If you take 8th triplets, for instance, you play three notes in a beat. Play "Do Re Mi" in the first beat, "Re Mi Fa" in the second and "Mi Fa So" in the third. But this may cause the notes to be too fast unless you set the tempo slow. You can also choose a fast tempo and play "quarter" triplets. You play three notes in two beats. Give each of those three even length. Triplets require you a sort of animal-like sense, but the first note of the three always hits at the time as the beat does. Use that point as reference. In case of 8th triplets, the first of the three always meets the quarter notes (see image).

(4) Ascend in groups of four notes. Go up three notes and down two. Repeat. Like "Do Re Mi Fa, Re Mi Fa So, Mi Fa So La.." When you reach the top, descend likewise. "Mi Re Do Ti, Re Do Ti La, Do Ti La So.."

(5) Go up with a chord arpeggio, and come down scale-wise. Pick a chord whose root is the lowest note of the position, and ascend arpeggiating it. In the E diatonic scale, you have E, F#m, G#m, A, B, C#m and D#dim as triads. So, you pick up the E chord when practicing the Do position because its lowest note is E. Go up arpeggiating it like the first bar in the image. When at the top, start descending from the note one step lower than the top. Descend playing every note in the scale. When descending, take the triplets. Let the arpeggio take the 8th notes, and let the scale take the 8th triplets, for example. The idea is to speed up the descending motion a bit because it's merely a scale-wise move. In the Re position, pick the F#m chord to arpeggiate. You see that at the 3rd-4th bars in the enlarged image you can see by clicking the thumbnail. (Where it's marked with 2 in a rectangular.) Proceed till the Ti position likewise (see image showing all 7 positions).

Guitar: Diatonic Scale Positions関連ページ

Scales-Minor-Scales

Electronic Musician

Scales: Diatonic Scales

Electronic Musician