Chris Evans - Major Scale Exercises Beginners SI Lesson

Introduction

Not the most interesting subjects, and not the most coolest of lessons, but .. its something that is a necessary evil
Personally, I dont actually mind setting aside time (lots of it) to running up and down playing scale exercises, its something that you can do and practice without actually having to be plugged in to the amp, I quite often sit in front of the computer doing other things and playing scales in between typing, waiting for downloads etc.

You can use scales to also practice picking techniques, legato & alternate picking to name just two but these are the ones that I tend to focus a fair bit on when playing these kind of exercises.
These kinds of exercises are also good for practicing timing, here at GMC we often have the luxury of great backing tracks to play along with, again with scales you can cut things down to the bare minimum and either play along with a basic backing (like the one in this lesson) or even futher with just a metronome.

The main aim of this lesson is really to focus on timing, getting your fingers used to moving accross all six strings, introducing your pinky and showing you that the same patterns can be played all over the fret board depending on the key.

This is a series of four exercises starting from a very basic scale ascending and descending to a more interesting 3 note per string scale exercise, you can of course jump to anyone you like, but as a complete beginner I`d recomend starting with Exercise 1 and working your way through to Exercise 4 as they all follow on from each other :)

Firstly lets look at the notes we are going to be playing in the first video:

The red dots indicate the root note, notice that I have not indicated what actual note we are starting with, thats because in this exercise we will be using this scale shape in four different positions.
Starting with C on the bottom E string.

This exercise changes keys from C to D to E and to F, I`ve mixed it up a little to try and make things a little more interesting. So you will play exactly the same shape that is in the diagram but moving the root note accordingly.

The backing that I`ve made here (although a tadge boring) is intentional, obviously a straight drum beat all the way through, a constant Bass playing the root note on the beat and just a keyboard note indicating the start of each pattern.