Learn Guitar Scales For Speed With 3 Creative Exercises

Learn Guitar Scales For Speed & Soloing Creativity Using 3 Unique Improvising Exercises

Think that learning guitar scales for speed means playing up and down the scale over and over to a metronome? Practicing scales exclusively with this approach is very limiting for your soloing creativity. Learning how to use scales by integrating them into musical situations helps you raise the quality of your guitar phrases and play fast solos more easily without getting lost.

A very effective and efficient way to practice guitar scales for speed and creativity is to play a chord, solo with an appropriate scale then play another chord and repeat. This trains your ear and helps you combine chords and individual notes together more easily.

This approach makes it so you are able to play cool musical ideas on your own without needing another guitar to accompany you.

Exercise #1:

Using guitar chords in 1^st inversion allows you to play a cool sounding idea that constantly moves up the fretboard by changing keys. This is done playing a basic major chord followed by a major chord in first inversion that is one fret above.

Doing this creates a strong, building sense of direction:

Here is how to practice this idea with guitar scales to increase your guitar soloing speed, creativity and scale vocabulary:

Step One: Play the first major chord.

Step Two: Improvise for a bit by beginning either one of these guitar scales from the lowest note of the chord: Major or Lydian (patterns shown below)

Step Three: Play the major chord in first inversion that is a fret above the chord you just played.

Step Four: Improvise for a bit by beginning a Mixolydian scale from the lowest note of the chord.

Here are the three scales mentioned so far:

Step Five: Continue moving in this pattern until you’ve played all the chords in the tab (or indefinitely until you run out of room on the fretboard).

This practice method is very effective for helping you practice usable speed with guitar scales. This is because you are training yourself to use scales in a musical context rather than just in isolation.

Note: Every first inversion chord in this exercise is the V chord of the next root position chord. This is why the Mixolydian mode is used. If you don’t know much about music theory, that’s ok. Get started learning about it now with this easy-to-follow music theory resource.

Exercise #2:

In exercise 1, you continually moved up the fretboard. In this exercise, you’ll use chords in second inversion to up one fret, then down one fret.

Play the tab below by first playing a minor chord, then playing a major chord in second inversion (one fret higher) and a minor chord one fret lower than the one you began with:

Since minor chords are being used, you will use different guitar scales to play with them. Here are a few good choices:

Use the same approach from exercise 1 with this chord progression. Note that this one is a bit more tricky at first. To make it easier, start by only playing the root note of each chord (without the other notes) until you have the pattern memorized.

Use Mixolydian over the major chord in second inversion.

Also notice that the minor scales here share many notes in common. Learn to play these guitar scales with speed by using only the firs two strings of each pattern. For example: Start by playing with minor pentatonic, then play minor for while, then play Dorian for a while.

Exercise #3:

This exercise uses a common cadence (a sequence of notes used to create a musical resting point) to help you learn exotic scales.

Play the following chords either with your fingers or by picking the lowest note before the others:

Listen to how this simple 3 chord-progression gives a strong sense of closure.

Use the same approach from the previous exercises, while playing these guitar scales:

Chord #1: E Minor

Chord #2: B Phrygian Dominant or E harmonic minor (shown below)

Chord #3: E Minor

Note: Phrygian Dominant is the 5^th mode of harmonic minor. This means the pattern on the fretboard begins on the 5^th note of the harmonic scale. Both of these scales give you the power to add tons of intensity to your playing and make this cadence sound awesome.

Practicing all three of the simple exercises in this article helps you quickly learn guitar scales for speed and musical expression (something many players don’t do).

However, there are many more ways to practice for guitar speed so every solo you play sounds totally pro. Learn one approach that helps you play guitar fast without moving your hands any faster.