Are scales important?
I sat with a friend that started to learn guitar. He finished his learning somewhere around the year he started. I was with a guitar with me and I asked him if he can play me something. He took the guitar and played a scale. It was a double harmonic scale. At first, I was shocked. How did he know that scale? It is quite uncommon for first-year students to meet that scale.
The friend answered me that this was the scale that his friend showed him and because it sounded interesting and cool he continued to practice it. Because of that he still remembers it. Interesting I said.
And why did you quite? The answer was more interesting than I thought. Because it was so boring to play a scale, he said, so he played it less and less and the teacher got angry. So, the normal resolution of this conflict was him stop playing. After that, the conversation drifted away from the guitar.
I left the table with the thought that the only thing he remembers it’s this cool scale and he quit playing the guitar because his teacher asked him to learn to play scales.
When I started to learn guitar. I had this boring, rely on boring exercises. The main exercise was the scales. C major scale to be particular. I hate it. Why should I learn to play a scale? It worse than an etude, back then I didn’t know what etude was. But it was boring. Not interesting and not moving me forward in mind of course.
For a long time, I was puzzled by the idea of keys. As a performer, I get a score and I need to play it. If it has sharps or flats it doesn’t meter. What important is the note I play.
It resolved when I learned that the song is composed on a scale. The idea is that when a composer starts to write music he can use all the notes. But he doesn’t use all the notes. He chooses a scale and sticks to it. Of course, from time to time he can change the scale or choose a note, not from the scale. But most of the time he plays at the scale playground. It’s like his football field.
What did it mean to me? From my perspective, the musicians can be divided into 2 groups:
- Composers
- Performers.
I didn’t want to compose. All this theory is not for me. I get the score and I play. Right? WRONG.
When I progressed in my playing I encounter more keys. Keys that has 5 sharps or 3 flats. I was lost on the fretboard. Where these notes are located. I looked for the same note without the accidental and took half step up or down.
It was long and difficult. At that point, I decided I need to learn the scale. After I practiced the scale the notes where exactly at my fingertips. So the playing was very smooth.
It seems that a scale is the best way to learn the notes that the composer use. If I look for the generic way to guess what to practice. It ends with the scale. More so a lot of time the composer insert the scale as is into to composition he writes. The scale becomes an essential tool to prepare for that.
It was an evolving moment. If the scales are bare bones of music. Then in scales, I need to put all my effort. Let’s learn the C major in all 5 positions. Let’s learn the pentatonic in all 5 positions lets learn the Dorian mode. Wait we have the Segovia scales. Let’s not forget them either.
What started as enlightenment ended in a mess. It was boring it all sounded the same. I didn’t felt I was making progress. And worst of all, I picked the guitar fewer times.
I can say I felt frustrated as my friend.
After a time I listened to a podcast about the guitar. In this podcast, he talked about (you can guess?) scales. As an example, he presented the “Tequila song”
I was caught by this simple shiny tune. Decided to learn it. This decision was good it took me from the scale to music to songs. It took me to the reason why I play in the first place.
I decided in spite of all the benefits it’s still boring and not interesting and I certainly not going to learn all the scales in all the position on the fretboard.
What next? I understand the importance of scale. I decided if I meet a music composition that I don’t know the scale. Then I will learn the scale of that particular song. If till now I didn’t meet music composition in C# major (7 sharps) for example. It means it’s not important for me to learn it and most likely I will forget it faster than it took to learn it.
