Jchm

Everytime i'm jamming over any genre, be it jazz, rock, w/e i end up playing that damn scale

Is there someway to "lvl up" and learn any other scale?

Mephaphil

The minor Pentatonic and the blues scale are not the same.

Learn the major scale and the relative minor. Go read about them and learn them. If you know the major scale, in theory you know the relative minor. They share the same notes. Like the Major and Minor pentatonics.

Go learn the major scale first.

Just checking, do you know all 5 positions of the Pentatonics and blues scale?

__________________

Junior#1

Yes. It's called learning and using a different scale. It's not rocket science.

__________________

Mephaphil

Bad day?

He's just politely asking for some guidance.

__________________

steven seagull

Just play something else, your hands only do what you tell them to so if you don't like the noises you're making tell them to do something different

__________________
Actually called Mark!


...it's a seagull



stuffmycatswatchontv.tumblr.com

chronowarp

I'm fairly certain that your problem is related to you not hearing musically, and thinking musically, but rather, defaulting to patterns and ingrained muscle memory habits.

Maybe depart from thinking about scales and work on singing and hearing lines over what you want to solo over, then try to replicate that on the guitar.

__________________

Check out my band Socrates and the Lava Gods

icronic

Well can you play pentatonic up and down the entire neck? If not you should start there. From there learn your full major/minor scales up and down the neck.

Learn more solos, but don't just learn them... Figure them out. Why the notes they're playing work and how they relate the chord that they're being played over.

Finally if you want a quick and dirty way to make things more interesting just take your standard pentatonic scale and start adding chromatic notes to it. So long as you emphasize and end on the "good" notes from the pentatonic scale you can literally add any other note before or in between and make it sound good.

Mephaphil

If you can do what those guys said, do it.

Personally I find that scales tell me that this note and this note will work with this and without knowing that I'd struggle forever to find the same level of options I have just by knowing 5 shapes and their roots with some theory.

__________________

Tempoe

Just play in the minor scale instead, then do a few min pent licks as well. Like said, learn up and down the neck and lots of positions, I doubt you know all the pent anyways

Jchm

Ehm, nope :/

I was talking about this one.



I'm a total newb to music theory, i really have learn some.

chronowarp

There's no doubt you need to know the scales and fingerings, but that doesn't seem to be the issue.

His problem sounds more like he doesn't know how to make music out of what he already has available to him. Adding 2 notes to the mix isn't going to solve any of his problems.

__________________

Check out my band Socrates and the Lava Gods

mdc

Do you use many arpeggios? They're very useful... and not just for jazz, either.

__________________
Sweet

EmilGD

I think this post should be emphasized.
A lot.

Captaincranky

I always suggest learning the "Phrygian Dominant Scale". First, because I like the Spanish influence it can impart to your music. Second, but perhaps more importantly, it always provokes extended, "discussions".

Barricade_28

I agree with this.

However, it's hard ti improvise over music when doing the "signing over the music" method since much of it is trial and error. So when improvising, just try to get out of the mentality of scales, or learn new scales.

food1010

That trial and error is very important. It helps to start slow and work your way up. You don't need to start by doing it in time. You can go note by note at first. Record a drone or something on a single chord and just start singing. If you hit an idea you are at least somewhat interested in, try to work it out on guitar. The more you do this kind of thing the more fluent you'll become. Eventually you want to get to the point where you can play along in time to whatever you sing.

That said, it helps to know the theory when doing this. If you know how to build scales and chords, that'll help you understand what you're hearing and help you internalize the theory.

Edit: Transcribing music (or just playing along by ear if you can) helps immensely. In fact, that's arguably the best way to train your ear.

__________________
Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.
-Chick Corea

chronowarp

I've found it to be quite the contrary in experience. Your voice is like a direct link to what you're hearing in your head...although that issue may also be related to being an underdeveloped musician.

But honestly, your voice is less influenced and constrained by patterns and habits you have on an instrument that you play everyday.

__________________

Check out my band Socrates and the Lava Gods

HotspurJr

If it's trial-and-error, that's the problem! It means the connection between your mind and the fretboard is weak.

The #1 thing you can do to improve your soloing is ear training. Get your MIND in shape. Singing before you play is a great way to do that. So is using the function ear trainer (download from miles.be). So is transcribing. (Start with simple melodies you know by hard. If you can't instantly find them on the guitar, that's an indication of how weak your mind-fretboard link is. You gotta work on that).

Once your ear is in shape, you incorporate new musical ideas by studying them: figuring them out by ear. The more you immerse yourself in new ideas, the stronger your ability to play them will be.

For now, though, throw out the minor pentatonic and solo in the major scale while working on your ear.

Mephaphil

The guy knows one position of the blues scale. I think that he will unlock a lot of potential by being able to open up the neck.

Of course the cognitive approach to music needs to change, he needs to know licks, needs to be able to imagine licks and to play them.

My advice (and it's just one way, other people are right too) is to learn the major and minor pentatonics in all 5 positions and understand how they connect, where the roots, 3rd and 5th are in all positions. Imagine if the scale you know can be played with slight differences to the pattern all over the neck. That's what we're talking about. Google it. You'll see the roots and that they connect.

You need theory too. Go to www.justinguitar.com and follow his advice.

Personally I don't see how just noodling is gonna do anything, if you have theory behind it, yea okay, but then you'll know scales. I think it will take a lot longer to learn how to play over backing tracks and improvise successfully with no knowledge at all. You're just searching for a light switch in the dark. I think that if you encourage theory you will move into scale theory, even just a little bit at least, if you don't know any theory you might not even know that position 4 of the Am pentatonic is the same as position 4 of the Bm pentatonic. I've seen that before. Someone I know once thought he could only play in Am.

But like you say, if you can encourage someone to try and play what they imagine, that's a good thing. I feel that scales do encourage you to play in key, and making stuff up by ear can lead to you playing out of key as you aren't constantly in sync with notes that fit a key, whereas the opposite applies to scales.

It seems people are in 2 camps:

1) Those who know scales.

2) Those who seem to hate them.

I'd be very interested to see a players ability who hasn't learnt any scales to play melodically over a backing track compared to someone who has studied scales for the same time playing.

__________________