Practice Guitar - How To Practice Guitar Scales Like A Pro!

I would like to share with you a couple of scale techniques that will help you in learning your scales while you practice guitar.

When practicing your guitar scales, there are couple of points to keep in mind while learning how to practice your guitar scales like a pro.

1. Practice slow

2. Proper technique

3. Your right hand

1. Practice slow: When practicing a new guitar scale, there is a tendency to want to practice your guitar scale as fast as possible. I would like to encourage you to go the reverse route. Learn your scales extremely slow. The general rule of thumb when learning your guitar scales is "The slower you go, the faster you will become." What this means is that the slower you practice your guitar scales, your fingers will become more technically proficient in memorizing the guitar fret board when learning a new scale. As you learn the new scale slowly, over and over again, you will in time be able to increase your speed until you will be able to get really fast when playing your guitar scales.

2. Proper technique: Make sure that when you're practicing your guitar scales to ensure that you are using proper left hand fingering technique. It can be very easy to only want to use the first three fingers on your left hand that you are most comfortable playing with. I would encourage you to learn to play your guitar scales with all 4 fingers. In time, playing with all 4 fingers will allow you to be able to play more notes, at a faster pace, if need be. You will also not be limited to what I call positional three finger playing. Positional three finger playing gives a guitar player less solo and speed options.

3. Your right hand: A key factor that most guitar players forget about is their right hand. When practicing your guitar scales, make sure that you are utilizing your right hand properly. This can be done in a couple of ways. Make sure that you are holding your guitar pick properly. Decide ahead of time that when you practice the guitar with your right hand, you will use what is called alternate picking. Alternate picking is when you practice your guitar scales with your right hand alternating the pick going: up, down, up, down. Many guitar players play only with down stroke's or upstroke's. Break this cycle right now and play your guitar scales like a pro by utilizing alternate picking.