Learning Jazz Scales - Two Powerful Strategies

One of the biggest challenges with learning jazz guitar is internalizing jazz scales. There seems to be an endless number of jazz scales that need to be learnt! And they all need to be learnt over the entire fretboard. Just thinking about this can cause many aspiring jazz guitarists to feel overwhelmed. Can you relate to this? The feeling that there is just not enough time in the day to learn them all!

The purpose of this article is to give you a two powerful strategies to help you overcome this feeling of overwhelm…

Jazz Scale Strategy #1: Learn One Scale At A Time…

I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first started jazz guitar teaching I used to overwhelm students by handing them sheets filled with many scales. I thought I was doing my job by giving them lots of different jazz scales to learn. I equated good teaching to handing out vast amounts of information. And do you know what? This did NOT work! Only the most talented students could absorb all the scales. The rest felt overwhelmed and really didn’t know where to start.

When I noticed the poor results my “teaching” method was getting, I then tried an experiment. I gave students only ONE scale to learn. And over the period of quite a few lessons, I showed them how to master that ONE scale over the entire fretboard. This approach worked. In fact…the results blew me away. Some of the things that I noticed by using this teaching approach included…

• My students actually enjoyed practicing scales.
• My students started to improvise with that scale in a very musical way.
• My students felt a sense of progress.
• My students felt more confident overall as guitar players.
• My students never felt overwhelmed which made them much more enthusiastic and positive about their learning process.
• My students technique improved drastically.

If you have never used this approach before, you will be getting outside of your comfort zone. It may require you to practice scales in a new way…sticking to one jazz scale for as long as it takes to master it. If it takes a month…great! If it takes 3 months…great! If it takes longer…that’s fine also.

If you’re not sure of what to practice in order to master the scale you have chosen, then I recommend finding out more about the Guitar Scale Mastery membership website.

Jazz Scale Strategy #2: Five Key Areas Of Scale Learning…

Many jazz guitarists learn scales on a very superficial level. They memorize a few scale fingerings and they that think their job is done. Unfortunately this shallow level of scale internalization often leads to jazz improvisation that sounds mechanical and too ”scaley”. They sound like they are just running up-and-down scales when they solo.

To avoid this trap, I’ve found it helpful to learn scales using the following key areas of learning…

1. Ears: This means that you must internalize the sound of the scale. You know exactly what each note of the scale sounds like.
2. Eyes: This means that you need to learn to visualize the scale over the entire fretboard. With this ability you do not have to think in terms of scale patterns. You can see all the notes of the scale everywhere without having to think.
3. Fingers: This is the process of developing your muscle memory. It is your ability to physically play the scale anywhere on the fretboard.
4. Intellect: This is the process of developing your intellectual understanding of the jazz scale. It includes things like knowing exactly what notes and scale degrees are in the scale. It also includes having an understanding of where you can use the scale in real-life playing situations. There’s no point learning a scale if you don’t know where to use it!
5. Applications: This is developing your ability to use the scale in a musical way. Examples of this include…
   • Learning licks, solos and melodies.
   • Improvising over backing tracks.
   • Jamming with other musicians.

A well-rounded system of internalizing guitar scales must develop all five areas. By working on all five areas you’ll feel like you’re making a LOT of progress. And this feeling of progression really helps reduce your feelings of overwhelm.