Guitar Scales- An Important Exercise To Learn
Do you know your guitar scales? If you’re learning to play guitar, scales are an important exercise for you to learn. Scales are often neglected on the guitar, for some reason. But you would be hard pressed to find a good pianist who didn’t have at least some level of proficiency at scales. The same should be true for guitarists.
The benefits of learning guitar scales
Learning to play scales on your guitar can have many benefits. One of the benefits is that you learn the notes of each particular scale, and become comfortable playing those notes. When you play a song in that key, you will already be used to playing each of the notes and will know where they are.
Playing guitar scales also has great technical benefits. Playing scales can help you increase your dexterity, precision, and speed of your playing. If you play scales each time you practice, over time you’ll notice your playing skills increasing from this simple exercise.
Learning and playing guitar scales
There are dozens of different scales, but you’ll want to start out with a few common ones. The most common scales for guitar are probably C, G, D, & A. I’d suggest that you start with major scales, as they are generally easiest and more commonly used. Later you can go on to minor scales plus other scales.
When you first start learning a scale, play it slow enough that you can play each note correctly and cleanly. As you get better, you can speed it up. However, never play them fast enough that you lose control. When you play a scale, each note should be perfect – clean, and in steady rhythm, tone, and volume. As a teacher of mine once said, “Make your scales like a pear necklace – each note, perfect, round, and beautiful!” Follow this advice and watch your playing improve!
Emg Guitar Pickups
EMG, Inc first started manufacturing guitar pickups back in 1976, known as EMG pickups. Over the years they have earned the reputation for quality, clear sounding pickups used by many professional artists. ESP guitars and Jackson guitars currently use EMG pickups as their standard pickup design. Their high output is preferred by hard rock and heavy metal guitarists because of the pickups higher gain output as opposed to most lower output pickups. Some of the bands and artists who currently endorse EMG pickups are Tom Morrello, Zakk Wylde, Stephen Carpenter, Metallica, Slayer and many others
The most common EMG pickups are the EMG 81 and 85. The EMG 81 is usually considered to be the lead pickup and is more commonly used in the bridge position, while the EMG 85 is mainly used as a rhythm pickup more used in the neck position. In my opinion, for the Les Paul 6 string guitar the EMG 81 is best suited for distortion and the EMG 85 for clean tones. The EMG 85 in the neck position lacked the clarity of the bridge position EMG 81 when it came to distortion sounds.
Personally, I have had great success with using EMG pickups in a Gibson Les Paul and 7 string ESP guitar especially if you are into heavier sounding music. The clarity, deeper tone, and added gain are what make the pickups more suitable. One negative thing about the EMG active pickups is the need for a 9 volt battery, but it’s not much of a problem because the battery lasts for a long time. You just need to make sure you replace the battery at least every 6 months because of tone loss over time.
Installation for a set of EMG pickups is fairly easy depending on the type of guitar you have. With the right tools I was able to install a set of Zakk Wylde custom EMG’s in Gibson Les Paul in under an hour. As long as you follow the right installation diagrams for your type of guitar and have basic soldering skills you should not run into any problems.
