Festival awards
Sponsorship
Festival News
About festival
Articles
International Cinema Festival of India
Festival overview, awards, submission and contact information
Some insight on learning guitar scales
Playing the chords is one of the most primary things in learning the guitar. It is very much necessary and essential to learn to play the chords if you wish to be a guitarist. They can be considered as the absolute base of guitar learning. Major chords and Minor chords are the two types of chords. This article concerns scales, not chords. Scales are, in common terms, a union of chords. Read more about scales further through this article.
Some of you might be looking for a correct definition of scales. I will give you the answer. A scale consists of various chords which are in harmony with the other chords of the set, when played. There are various types of scales. Some of them are sharp scale, flat scale, major scale, minor scale, pentatonic scale, chromatic scale etc. To play the guitar proficiently one must need to know these scales.
If you have to learn an unknown song or identify the chords for a music piece, learning scales is absolutely necessary. If you have a taste of music and know the base knowledge on scales, you can easily figure out scales in no time. You can play any song you want, based in a specific scale, if you are proficient in that scale.
Rhythm, melody and harmony are the three basic things or elements in music. It is the combination of these three that produces good music. If you want to be a good guitarist and have all these three elements perfectly reflected through your guitar, you need to know about the scales. This knowledge can enhance your musical sense and adaptability very much further. This fact is often forgotten or ignored by many new-generation, aspiring guitarists. One can’t go much further in guitar without the knowledge of scales.
Now, I will give you some basic instructions on beginning to learn the scales. First of all, your guitar should be properly stringed and tuned. I give you these instructions under the assumption that you have some knowledge about the guitar. You can tune your guitar with the help of some standard-tuned musical instrument, an electronic keyboard perhaps. You can also tune it online. There are many websites which give the correct tuning levels for you.
One should seek out the musical relationship in terms of pitch and sound between the notes and chords rather than just mechanically gulping down the names of the chords, scales and notes. After quite a while of practicing, one will certainly get this relation naturally. If you master it, then you are the master.
Scales are determined by sharp notes and flat notes. ‘C Major’ is the chord or scale which is set as the standard. One sharp note ahead of C Major lies G Major and one flat note behind C Major lies F Major. The order of sharp scales further down are D Major, A Major, E Major, B Major, F# (read F sharp) Major and C# Major. The order of flat scales after F major are Bb (read B flat) Major, Eb Major, Ab Major, Db Major, Gb Major and Cb Major.
You can learn to play the guitar with the help of various resources available on the net. Click here to learn guitar scales