Why You Don’t Need Scales

Countless people like you scour the internet looking for information on scales. Why? Because you were sold a lie. Or teachers follow the herd. They don’t know any better. Besides everyone else is doing it so it must be right, right? Wrong?

A few years ago, after playing rock guitar for 25 years I caught the jazz bug. So I took a few lessons and decided to go to college to study jazz guitar. I studied day and night and didn’t work so I could focus on learning how to improvise in jazz. This hard work paid off and I was at the top of the class. I was taught about scales, modes, arpeggios, intervals, understanding chord progressions. I had a private lesson every week for an hour and a half, played with a jazz combo two times a week, had a jazz theory course, and some other courses.

Every week I would go in and nail the guitar exercises that I was given. Name the notes all over the fretboard, play arpeggios up and down all over the fretboard, play scales all over the fretboard, play two string exercises up and down the strings and so on. What I started to notice after a while is that I still couldn’t improvise over a progression!

I started to scour the internet trying to find out how teachers explained to students how to solo. I found the same thing every time, explanations of what scales or modes fit over what chords, tons of scale, arpeggio and interval exercises. Months were passing by and no real progress was being made. I was even told by the teachers that it would take years to absorb all the material they threw at us. After a year and a half I ended the program in disgust. I had learned all these scales and modes and still couldn’t improvise over a progression!

But I was persistent. I had to figure out the secret! I found a book that talked about how you should emphasize chord tones. Now, I thought, we’re getting somewhere. It started out simple, and then Oh No! The entire middle portion of the book was filled with scales, modes and more theory! I found another site that talked about learning the 5 CAGED shapes. Shapes…shapes….yes, that makes sense. When I was in the jazz program I noticed how quickly I learned the chord shapes up and down the neck for all sorts of 7th chords. I learned where each interval was – where the root of the chord was, where the 3rd was and so on. I also remembered reading about how great the human brain was (especially the right brain) at recognizing patterns and shapes, like how we recognize a human face much better and faster than a computer can. So why not use shapes for visualization when soloing as well as when playing chords?

When you were learning chords, many of you probably bought a book containing 1001 Chords. I’ll bet most of the chords in it were never played. Instead what happened was you learned a few chords that you play most often. An ambitious few may have realized that major, minor and other bar chords actually form a shape on the guitar. This chord shape can be moved up and down the neck to play other chords. So after learning a few chord shapes you were now able to play tons of chords! An even smaller few may have thought about which chord tone is under each finger and how to modify them to play other types of chords such as sus4, dominant 7th and so on. Well I’m here to tell you that the same approach should be applied to soloing! Instead of learning a million scales (or chords) you learn a small chord shape that contains the notes you will play in your solo. You learn the larger shape around the smaller shape that contains the extra notes you can play to connect the shapes.

Now, instead of looking at the fretboard and being overwhelmed by all the possible notes and scales/modes I see small little shapes that appear and then move as the next chord arrives. I also see a larger shape of the possible notes with the key I’m playing in. The smaller shapes fit within the larger shape. The larger shape allows me to play notes that connect the chord tones together. What has essentially happened is a massive simplication of the process of learning how to play over chord changes.

After years of frustration and finally finding the solution, I decided I MUST share this information with the world! So I created a site that focuses exclusively on teaching you the simplest and most effective approach to learning how to solo there is. Never stress about learning tons of scales again!

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