There are numerous examples/patterns of scales with varying notes per string. How do you decide which one to learn as there must be numerous versions. Loved the Pentatonic book which prompted me to acquire your Theory Book – great read.
Thanks David, hope you get something out of the books.
There isn’t really a best scale pattern as such. Ideally you’d learn and be proficient with them all, but in reality we tend to choose our favourites over time.
I know the fretboard quite well but will still need to stop and think sometimes if I were to play a scale pattern that I don’t use often.
If you jam with others or play regularly over jam tracks, you will eventually find the ones that work best for you. Some will work better with your fingers and technique, some you will find you can make them sound more musical, some you will find you can simply remember a lot easier than others.
In the end, no matter what patterns you use, they are all just the same set of notes played elsewhere on the neck. Some might lend themselves better to certain scale sequences or licks and phrases simply because the fit differently under the fingers.
If blues is your thing you might find the standard ‘box 1’ pentatonic pattern is where you spend most of your time because it just sounds more ‘bluesy’. Reality is so many people play around this pattern that it is just easier to recreate the typical licks and phrases we expect to hear. Try playing the same licks and phrases elsewhere might be harder to do because if fingering constraints. On the other hand, playing around with a different pattern might give you different ideas.
If fast scale sequences are your thing then you would probably spend more time playing around with 3nps (3 notes per string) scale patterns. These are useful for fast playing because you can use repeating patterns across the strings.
I don’t play very fast but I do still use 3nps scales quite a lot because they are very easy to memorise and also easy to use as a basis for figuring out scales that you haven’t memorised. I hardly ever use scale diagrams for scales I don’t use. I just know the formulas and so 3nps makes it very easy to find scale notes this way.
I think one thing that’s more important for guitarists to realise is that you don’t need to always be thinking in terms of “all six strings”. Because of the way scale diagrams are displayed and generally taught, people can forget that a scale is just a set of notes. I spend most of my time thinking and playing in terms of scale fragments based around the root note or related to CAGED chords. It takes some time to learn doing things this way but once you do it opens up the fretboard. Major, minor and pentatonic scales I can pretty much play all over the neck, quite efficiently, but if you ask me to quickly play a typical scale pattern using all six strings … a lot of them I would need to pause and think for a moment.
There’s nothing wrong with either approach, just do what works best for you and suits the style of music you want to play. If you always pay attention to the root notes and chords tones that are underlying any scale, your playing and fretboard knowledge will always be improving with experience. If you spend all your time just memorising scale patterns then you will eventually limit your fretboard knowledge.
I can play up and down the neck and give the impression that I’ve fully mastered every single scale note, it’s not however what I’m doing. I generally piece together scale and chord fragments, which I can find very quickly in many places along the neck: the result is it just looks like I am visualising the entire fretboard as one giant scale. In reality I view the fretboard as a bunch of small sections that I just piece together like a jigsaw puzzle, as and when I need to. I will often pause for thought even if it doesn’t look like I’m doing so.
I’ve digressed a bit there from your original question but hopefully it gives you a better idea of things. Feel free to keep asking questions if it’s not making sense to you.
