Don't skip this lesson. It's one of the most powerful scale exercises EVER!
View the full lesson at One Finger Solos | JustinGuitar
OK, I have been playing guitar for 35 years. I have always avoided the major scale in favour of the pentatonic, labeling the former as a beginner’s set of scales that is reserved for those doing College Music lessons with Mr Smith at 2pm on Fridays. Boring stuff. I am lucky enough to have loop functon in my multi-effects pedal. I really can’t believe how good this sounds; or emphasize enough how much doing these scales has opened my eyes to chord (triads) and key structures. This stuff is gold and contrary to my initial thought great fun and a new “sound” for me to explore. Thank you Justin.
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Welcome to the forum Kevin. The Major scale is the foundation of music and once mastered opens up your journey into modes. Which is a whole new sound.
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Love this lesson. Such a clever way to help your solos sound more melodic, and less like scales. Thanks, Justin!
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So if playing solos with one finger have so many good things going for it why keep soloing with your four fingers and use one finger solo only as an exercise?
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Using one finger would be impossible to do some bends, hammer-on/pull off combos and you’d be jumping all over the neck in a jurky motion.
It is a great exercise though.
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Ahh ok i c ty for the reply 
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Using 1 finger (or Justin also suggests practicing solos on 1-2 strings) is similar to your college professor having you write a research paper on like “The impact of adolescent music education on brain development” but only using 100 words or less. It forces you to think about things you don’t need to think about when you have a larger set of tools to work with, and therefore helps you refine that 1 tool to a more precise level than you would naturally.
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The one finger exercise isn’t about limiting things. Okay, so you can’t do hammers/pulls, as Rick says, but it doesn’t limit note choices like the one or two string solos do. You can go anywhere in the scale with one finger.
Playing with one finger helps to learn the shape of the scale and learn where the notes are in relation to each other rather than just learning a finger pattern.
I think it helps to learn the scale as scale degrees as well as notes. Scale degrees are the same shape in every key, whereas the notes are different in each key.
When you play scale degrees with one finger, patterns within the scale start to emerge. For instance, scale degrees 7 and 1 are always on adjacent frets, so are 3 and 4. All the others are 2 frets apart. This helps to know where you are within the scale.
And of course, each degree has a unique sound so hearing intervals becomes easier.
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Also is it OK to use open notes when doing this exercise, as they do sound good in some combinations?
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If the open string notes are in the scale / key then yes, there is no reason not to occasionally use them as a contrast or musical punctuation. Remembering to keep using one finger for the majority of the playing.
There are no open notes in the G major scale as far as I know but they still sound good to me.
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Actually, all the open string notes are in the G major scale. The pattern taught doesn’t include them, though. This makes the pattern moveable on the fretboard, which it wouldn’t be if open strings were included.
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Stuart the open strings are E A D G B E, the notes of the G major scale are G A B C D E F#. Anywhere on the fret board that you find these notes you will find the G Major scale.
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This is actually a pretty genius idea, I’ve known the major scale positionally based on their fingerings for quite awhile now but was surprised how much more difficult it was trying to do with one finger. I can see the value in it for sure.
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