We’ve all heard some local hotshot guitar player say something like, “Scales? I don’t play scales, man, they’re just for jazz players.” You know the kind: It’s the guy or girl who taught themselves by ear and seemingly knows every Stevie Ray, Kirk Hammett, or Satch riff like the back of his or her favorite blond (hey, it could be rosewood, we won’t discriminate here).

Listen up dudes and dudettes: Whether you know you’re using them or not, any time you string a couple of single notes together, you’re playing a piece of a scale. Accept it or go home crying. When that amp goes live there are only three seriously useful things you can play on a guitar anyway: chords (three or more notes), intervals (two notes played simultaneously), and scale-based melodies (single notes). So, since you can’t avoid them no matter what you do, your playing can only improve with a working knowledge of what scales are all about. Here’s some scaly wisdom to live and die for:

Can You Hear Me?

All of us in the Western world hear scales pretty much the same way (as opposed to, say, sitar players in India, or koto players in Japan). Y’know what I’m sayin’? I’m talking about the whole do-re-mi thing here. If someone who knows scales sits you down and plays a regular, modern day, major scale, and then plays you the same scale but screws it up, you’ll be able to tell them which scale is right and which one is wrong, whether you think you can or not. Believe me, you can.

Even without musical training, the music we’ve heard on radio and TV all our lives has so ingrained each and every one of us with the “correct” sound, that it would be pretty unlikely for even the most tone-deaf of us not to be able to pick out the right scale when given an actual choice.

You Shoulda Learned This Stuff Years Ago… 

So if you haven’t, today’s the day. Just start working on the patterns shown below, one at a time — and with a great deal of patience. You aren’t going to learn or memorize — and certainly not master — these things in a day or a week or even a month. I worked on these patterns diligently for years, a little bit here and a little bit there.

Just start playing them, up and back, low note to high note and back again. Then slide up a fret and do it again. Gradually, you’ll memorize the patterns, and your hands will start to play the notes automatically. It’s at that point that you can begin to start exploring these patterns for melodies and lead guitar riffs. And after you’ve worked on them a bit, be sure to start analyzing the songs you already know and trying to recognize these scale patterns as they are being used in those songs. You’ll find them, if you put your brain to it.

Now, to see all the diagrams and a whole lot more instruction on this all-important topic, go here: ScalesAre Everywhere, Know ‘Em or Not;

By the way, this entire lesson is an excerpt from my new course (new for 2009) Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar — in which I demonstrate all 20 of the lesson columns in the book on DVD, with three-and-a-half hours of close-up video instruction. For some sample videos, go here: Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar