How important are scales and theory in your guitar playing?

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Do you use theory and scales in your guitar playing?

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Greg_L said:
Lol. I would like to play better though. Guitar anyway. I'm good enough on drums and bass. I'd like to do better leads. Not necessarily faster, although that would be good, but more diverse. All of my leads sound basically the same.
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hmmmm ....... fronting a band would get you there.

:D
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. How? I'd just be playing shit I already know how to play. :guitar: :p
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I'm just trying to push you into doing it!


as for the leads ...... hmmmmm, I dunno ........ you're gonna have to practice in some form.

You hate jamming but that's actually where I've done a lot of my developing as a player.
The reason is that there are no constraints ..... you can try stuff to see how it sounds ..... if it sucks , who cares?
Yes, you can do that at home too but you won't in general. Getting up on stage forces you to do something .. anything.

So I, personally, used to find jamming to be the very best sort of practice which is how I've always viewed it.
But, at this point, jams don't do squat for me except if I get a chance to play with some really good players.
But most of them are at home watching TV if they're not getting paid and besides, Florida musicians kinda suck. I've run into a few really good ones but not that many like in La.

And also, I've never tended to go to organized jams per se.
I just sit in with actual bands that don't generally let people sit-in. That is the most fun for me ...... especially if they do stuff I've never heard. That's a challenge and makes the night fly by.
Also it avoids the usual organized-jam curse of playing blues all night which I'm WAY sick of.

For you ...... hmmmmm, lemme ponder ....... gotta be a way for you to work on leads but still avoid all the things you hate ...... like jams .... blues ....... bad toans ...... other people.

:D
 
Lt. Bob said:
For you ...... hmmmmm, lemme ponder ....... gotta be a way for you to work on leads but still avoid all the things you hate ...... like jams .... blues ....... bad toans ...... other people.

:D
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Yes, that is my conundrum. :laughings:

I'm just not inspired by most lead players. I don't ever hear something or someone on guitar and think, man I want to do that. With the exception of someone like Slash, I can already pretty much do what my own personal "guitar heroes" do. I didn't cut my teeth with the goal of being a good lead player, nor have I ever listened to music where a wanky guitar solo and phrasing is the focal point of the song. I'm in a weird spot. I want to be a better lead player while not really being interested in studying the process. :facepalm:

I suppose just getting cleaner and faster with my own technique would be good enough. I know one thing - I don't want to shred or be a million-notes-per-second kind of guy.
 
you might try working on some of the more difficult Ventures stuff.
You like them enough to kinda want to do it and they definitely have some stuff that'll push your boundaries as a player while still being in the style you like.
 
Lt. Bob said:
you might try working on some of the more difficult Ventures stuff.
You like them enough to kinda want to do it and they definitely have some stuff that'll push your boundaries as a player while still being in the style you like.
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That's a good idea, and yeah that's something I could latch on to. Brian Setzer too. He's one guy that I really like as far as the way he plays, and I can probably do enough of it to keep me interested. Then I could apply that stuff to my shitpunk music. I like to infuse little tidbits of surf and rockabilly into my own gergpunk. I'm gonna go buy a mosrite and a gretsch. :D
 
Greg_L said:
I know! I want one so bad. Always have. :(
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I used to have all the catalogs and thought (still do) they were the most beautiful things in the world ..... and in all those colors.
You know I had a Mosrite bass? It was my first real bass.
They actually made a bass with a whammy bar!

I also used to lust after the Kustoms in all those colors although the first one I got was black 'cause I wanted it that day!
 
Greg_L said:
Brian Setzer too. He's one guy that I really like as far as the way he plays, and I can probably do enough of it to keep me interested. Then I could apply that stuff to my shitpunk music. I like to infuse little tidbits of surf and rockabilly into my own gergpunk. I'm gonna go buy a mosrite and a gretsch. :D
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+1! Especially the Brian Setzer and Gretsch aspects. His sound was already pretty honed in the 80s, and now 20+ years later I simply can't believe how cool his playing is.
 
Lt. Bob said:
I used to have all the catalogs and thought (still do) they were the most beautiful things in the world ..... and in all those colors.
You know I had a Mosrite bass? It was my first real bass.
They actually made a bass with a whammy bar!

I also used to lust after the Kustoms in all those colors although the first one I got was black 'cause I wanted it that day!
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Yeah you told me about that before. Very cool. I used to have a Mosrite-shaped no-name bass. It was a piece of shit, but it looked cool. It might have been a univox, but the headstock was sanded. It got stolen.

Actually it looked just like this, but it was all white.
guitar+1.jpg


When I opened for CJ Ramone last summer, he had a few custom made Mosrite basses - made just for him. His guitarist, Daniel Rey, who supposedly owns the real deal white Mosrite Ventures II that Johnny Ramone played since 77, had a new wine red Mosrite that was just stunning to look at. He let me fool around with it. Surprisingly solid compared to other Mosrites I've seen. The frets were pretty small though. Just right for flying powerchords. Probably not to good for lead stuff.
 
Reading through this it made me think of this guy I see a lot in a local music shop. He will come in and hook up an electric and just play for hours. The last time I was in there was a college age kid who pulled up a stool next to him and watched him for a few minutes and asked how he played like he did. He asked about him using scales and the circle of fourths, fifths etc. The guy looked at him and said "I don't know nothin about no notes, I just play.". It reminded me of what Mississippi John Hurt said about his style. He just played so it sounded right.
 
jonesey said:
Reading through this it made me think of this guy I see a lot in a local music shop. He will come in and hook up an electric and just play for hours. The last time I was in there was a college age kid who pulled up a stool next to him and watched him for a few minutes and asked how he played like he did. He asked about him using scales and the circle of fourths, fifths etc. The guy looked at him and said "I don't know nothin about no notes, I just play.". It reminded me of what Mississippi John Hurt said about his style. He just played so it sounded right.
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Always reminds me that the "correct" note is just a fret away anyway. When it comes to playing Jazz and blues, that's a lot of people's take on it. You can play notes out of key as long as it resolves back to the root. Hell we only have 12 notes in western music.
 
Defenders of theory-ignorance will often cite things like "Jimi Hendrix couldn't read music!" or something similar, as if learning to read music would've somehow made him worse. There are great players who don't know theory, but learning the theory will always make you a better player.

Also, when you're playing with others, it makes it SO much easier to collaborate if you're all speaking the same language. When you tell the bass player it's a ii-V back to the root and he looks at you with a blank stare, you know it's going to be a slog.

as far as playing, as long as you don't get hung up on forcing theory ideas into your playing you'll be fine. It does help you be more creative -- if you're in a rut getting from E to A in a blues, you know you can superimpose any arpeggio from F jazz minor -- you can woodshed some ideas using that as a starting point and come up with some new ideas. It gives you a starting point to experiment.

That said, I certainly don't look down my nose at someone who doesn't know a lot of theory (plenty of people know more than I do), but many people refuse to learn it, because they 'play by feel' -- well so do I! It's like refusing to learn grammar because you think it'll make you a weaker speaker.

Plus, theory is f'ing fascinating!!!
 
This is a good question. I don't think you can underestimate the value of scales and theory.
A comprehensive knowledge of theory and scales (in all keys, positions and octaves) utilises the fretboard and fingers more efficiently. Also a comprehensive knowledge of theory facilitates a better understanding of the structure and use of key progression and harmony. It is not essential to know theory and scales and many people chose to pass on the subject, personaly however I recomend the study of scales and theory to all who wish to achieve a high standard of musicianship.
 
mattdee1 said:
If you're playing rock n' roll, very basic theory goes a long way, IMO. It's true that some guys get by amazingly with nothing at all, but come on, there are some basics I think everybody should know--especially as a songwriter. For example, little things like the shapes for major and minor scales, knowing what a "relative minor" is, etc. Simple pimple, can be learned in half an hour. In fact, this stuff is so basic and fundamental, I think even a lot of the staunchly anti-theory guys pick it up by accident.

I definitely agree with the "communication" thing. This bass player I occasionally jam with has good feel to his playing, decent fretboard dexterity, etc. but if I start playing a new tune, he's completely lost. I'll say what the chords or notes are for one part, and he has no idea where to find them. I literally have to walk over to where he's standing and let him watch my hand up close while I play the part, or point to the frets for him. Very annoying and inefficient. When the song changes to a different part, it's laughable watching him "hunt" around looking for the right notes--if he had any grasp of basic theory, he'd *know* where to start looking. You can argue that the latter only takes the right "ear", which may be enough, but to me, there's no question that when learning new music, an ear combined with knowledge will be more powerful than an ear alone.
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Owning a bass guitar and amp as I do myself, does not make me or your mate a BASS PLAYER !! Added to that every player Ive worked,played with the theory nous, invaiably plays better,more creatively than I do ! (Yea ok so some are up their own arses!) The more I learn tells me just how little I know(Theory):laughings: !
 
I'm still plugging away with this task. How I wish I'd put the effort in when my brain was more retentive and my fingers were more flexible.

I'm making progress, though. :)
 
When you see someone fumbling away looking for the "right note" you can't help stepping in and introducing them to scales and modes. Anyone who thinks that scales are just something a geeky pianist uses to practice has completely missed the point. Scales are a roadmap of notes that you can play in a given key. Play an A natural minor scale over an Am7 chord and it sounds beautiful. Move just one fret down and play Ab natural scale over an Am7 chord and it sounds like your guitar needs a tuneup badly. Almost every note will be wrong. Sure you can feel your way and learn by hit and miss, or you can just learn some simple scales and KNOW what is going to sound good.

Even a simple pentatonic scale can be played in two and a bit octaves across 6 strings of the guitar. At two notes per string this gives you 12 notes to play. The number of ways you can play 12 notes is 8,916,100,448,256. You couldn't run that many steps in a lifetime. If you played one combination every second, it would take you over 283,000 years to play them all. Just 12 notes.

Somehow I don't seem to find that many combinations as much of a restriction, so you can exercise your creativity and come up with patterns that no-one has ever heard before. And every note will be in key
 
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