Practice Routine II (Melodic Minor/Harmonic Major) The following scale exercises are ones that I regularly practice to help me keep familiar with the four asymmetric scale forms (Major, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor and Harmonic Major) These exercises can be played at any tempo which you feel comfortable with, but the main point is accuracy here, not speed. There are many ways that these exercises could be fingered and the fingerings (within the tablature stave) are only a suggestion. I would suggest beginning with the Major scale first if these kind of exercises are new to you, as that is the easiest scale to hear melodically and then you can move on to the other scale types. I usually play all these exercises with a pick and employing alternate picking , (i.e. downstrokes/upstrokes) however you you could (with a little re-fingering) play these using other picking and fingering techniques to suit your own playing style. Working with a metronome is also a helpful aid in practising these exercises, however however I would only suggest this if you are already familiar with the fingerings and locations on the fingerboard. There is also an audio file accompanying these exercises for you to hear how they sound before you play them. As ever, take these exercises slowly at first until you know them from memor y and are playing them accurately. Happy Happy practicing!
This concludes Part Two Two of my scale practice routine and we've covered a lot of melodic material here. I use this very same exercise system a lot in my own practice and I've found it very helpful in expanding my understanding of the fingerboard and generally getting these scale forms under my fingers. You'll see that between these different scale types there is often little variation between the scales in ter ms of the pitches (usually one to two notes) and therefore this sytem really helps you in understanding the subtle variations between the scales. All these scales of course produce their own modes and whilst some may already be very familiar to you (perhaps those derived from the Major and Melodic scales for example) the others may be somewhat unfamiliar. I'll cover cover the modal scales in some future lessons too. Thanks for downloading this lesson and if you are interested in online or 1-1 lessons with me then please contact me via my website. www.online-guitar-lessons.org Thanks, Pete
