Fingertips stage 3…
You think your doing OK with chords then this comes along…
I did ok with chords. Slides were a bit much for a few days. Now the full bends on the little e string - wow…
Have you looked at the lessons in Grade 2 on scales, Jeff. I’ve not watched the videos so not sure if they just focus on learning the scale or also offer some pointers on making music with the scale.
And you could look at this: https://www.justinguitar.com/modules/major-scale-maestro-1 which does have some exercises to start down the music-making path.
I have the cobalt 8-38 now on my Ibanez. I tried the Rev. Willy’s 7-36 last time but I am too heavy handed to play those. I still prefer 9-46, but need to get fingers in shape now. Again! 
1 Like
If you are struggling to make music with any scale whatever I would de-pluralise that and narrow your options down to one and one only.
… can’t seem to grasp how being good with scales translates to smooth soloing
Again, narrowing your options down will remove some of the overwhelming choice and challenging of knowing what to play, when to play it, how to play it etc.
… I took private lessons for a while last year and focused only on scales and still came out confused.
Oh dear.
He said just play what you feel while I play the rhythm.
I try to refrain from being critical of others. It does sound like you needed more in the way of demonstration and guidance and coaching.
I did a little bit but to this day I can in no way add a solo to a song
A song is a long time to solo. Again, narrowing things down, restricting the limits, will help. Solo over one chord only. Solo over two chords for only four bars say. Not a song of many chords lasting several minutes.
This week I started with C since there are no sharps or flats , starting on the 8th fret.
You mean the C major scale, pattern 1, the E-shape? Do you want to learn to solo in major keys and using the major scale? If so then fine. You will be creating melodic lead guitar lines more than tearing up some killer licks. A more user-friendly and accessibly scale might be the minor pentatonic scale and something a little more lick based and blues infused.
Very easy there ( 8-10-12, 8-10-12 on fifth and 9 -10 on fourth)
It seems your guitar teacher taught you the 3-notes-per-string system. Justin and many, many others prefer to teach the CAGED system as a first choice. 3 NPS can come later once you are accomplished and maybe want to specialise on the sort of lead guitar playing that uses a lot of fast legato up and down the fretbaord.
I’m trying this again after several failures … hoping for different results lol. Thank you
Use this topic
In conjunction with the first six lessons here
7 Likes
I am doing a different online course and we do improv every Wednesday. The first step as someone mentioned above is to just play the scale over the rhythm and try to find notes that sound good. Then pick just a couple of notes and play them with different rhythm and timing. In fact you can just pick a single note and just play it with different timings and rhythm and make a good sounding solo. You don’t need to use the whole scale.
Maybe play the single note as 1/8th notes or 1/16th notes. Add a pause, only play on the 1st and 4th beats, etc. The rule is, if it sounds good it is good.
Once you get the feel for a single note, add a couple more and change the order of them, cresting little phrases that sound musical to you,
Don’t think to hard about it, just have fun with it and if something sounds good, explore that for a while and other ideas will come.
Yep, totally agree with this. I have been working on improv for the best part of a year and almost exclusively limiting myself to minor pentatonic. Getting comfortable with that will get you a long way.
1 Like
I have similar questions, although I still consider myself to be at a stage where I’m learning the scale positions whilst adding some improvisations like playing diagonally starting from day 8th fret on 6th string all the way down to 19th fret on high E. But eventually I will have exact same questions too. Some really good suggestions here too for when I get to your stage 
Hi everyone,
I greatly appreciate the tips and advice. I definitely have a lot to read and think about. I’ll review and reply more thoroughly when I get a chance. For a year now I felt scales would be my demise to end my progress in improving. I feel like there are a lot more options now.
To tell the full story, about a year ago I signed up for ten weeks of private one on one sessions with an experienced professional. This individual teaches at a local music school and I had simultaneously enrolled my daughter for some basic lessons. The basic lessons were too simple for me so he offered one on one with scales and improv. The goal was to perform at a local show to demonstrate my skills. After each lesson I found myself searching Justin’s lessons right after to try and make sense of what I learned each week. I wasn’t awful , just didn’t understand everything in 30 minutes per session . At the end of the ten weeks I was not able to play anything on stage as far as solos so I was disappointed and frustrated. The day of the show my friend who was in the beginner class got stage fr so I agreed to fill in to play rhythm with the group. On a positive note that gave my a chance to play on stage with my daughter. We played stand by me and I used my shiny new 12 string Takimine to give a unique sound.
Fast forward a year later and for the past few weeks I have been playing jointly with the same daughter, now 11 and in just a matter of weeks she can sing and play at the same time, obviously needs work and practice but amazing progress. We have been doing a song I know well, good riddance by Green Day. She can sing and play the whole thing from memory- no chord book for the most part. I’m hoping I can learn to solo some and add a solo in there once we perform together. As of now I will start with these fundamentals and work towards a 5 minute solo at the chorus or something. Hopefully… I know @tRONd has his daughter are both playing as well and she’s just a bit older, which is awesome. …end of rant and back to my boring work reports.
Thanks
Jeff
A scale is your vocabulary - it tells you what notes you can play that should sound good. Not all the notes of the scale will sound good all the time, and some notes from outside the scale may sound good, but generally if you stick to the notes of the scale you’ll be in a safe spot of avoiding anything that sounds too far off.
A minor pentatonic scale is even safer - such as the A minor pentatonic for songs in the key of C - as it takes out some of the more challenging notes and limits you to 5 notes that all sound good.
But just as you don’t use all your words in alphabetical order, you don’t want to play the scale in chromatic order. In playing, as in talking, you want to use patterns. You want to use repetition. You want to come back to certain notes that sound best to you. Sometimes this could mean going through a scale in a pattern - ACDC, CDED, DEGE, EGAE or ACDE, CDEG, DEGA, EGAC, GACD - but more often it means creating patterns and licks out of notes in the scale: A, GAC, A, A, GACD, E, A, GAC, A, D->E, D->E, D->E, CA.
So why learn the scales when you only use parts of them? Because you develop finger memory and your fingers start to learn where to go without thinking about it. But I would say that a better way to learn scales is to do so in patterns - even a simple pattern of CDEF, DEFG, EFGA, FGAB, GABC, etc. will sound much more musical than CDEFGABC.
That’s awesome! Glad to hear you’re having fun, and getting to play with your daughter!
I would, however, advice a less ambitious goal. A 5 minute solo is enormous. That’s an instrumental song at that point. That’s Paul Gilbert, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani level.
How about a solo for 2-4 bars? Start there, and once you’re good with 2-4 bars, you can expand to something longer. Or you can add in little improvisations - 1-2 bars, or just some accents notes - here and there throughout a song.
I just looked up a couple songs that have well known guitar solos - Metallica’s Enter Sandman and Audioslave’s Like a Stone - to see how long they are. Enter Sandman’s solo is ~48 seconds, while Like a Stone’s solo is ~34 seconds long. So maybe set a goal of a 15-30 second solo? I mean, I love your ambition, but a 5 minute solo seems a bit much. 
I would just work on 3,4,5 note licks and then string them together
Lol good point, especially that song is not Metallica lol. Maybe go for a minute.
Keep it simple Jeff even 60 seconds is a long time for most solos. Build it up slow. Work a few bars at a time, aim for a 30 second run max. And make sure it breaths and its not a freight train running wild. 
1 Like
Thanks Toby. This may be a dumb question, but it seems like this group is exceptionally smart here. How do I know which scale to use for a solo? Would I pick a C if the song is in the key of C or does it matter? I think I asked that teacher a long while back, but can’t remember what he said. The last time I tried it I used E minor as in Justin’s first E minor lesson and held my own for a little while following the teachers lead.
1 Like
Personally, to keep thing simple, if the song was in the key of C, I’d impro using the A minor pentatonic. All the notes of that pent scale are in the key so you wont go wrong but listen to what sound good and what sounds really good. And don’t go walking over the fretboard to start, stay in one position and limit your self to the G B e strings. Learn what works and experiment.
1 Like
Generally… (this is my very uneducated guide)
If the key is major major/pentatonic of the key you are in
If its blues then the blues scale
if its minor the minor pent/blues of that key
If its major you can use the relative minor scales
Generally you want to aim for notes in the chord being played
So C major would be say C/F/G Chords so the C pent scale, or the A minor pent/blues
but you could play the F pent / G pent on those chords
awaiting some corrections…
1 Like
Do no get lost in scales the old fashinoned way! I did that mistake looong ago!
Every. scale in 5 positions !!! No, go to Fretscience and learn this in a better way - however you need to tpknow the root and then you do not learn names of every note in the scale BUT it’s position i.e. 1,2, b3, 3, ….
The major scale is the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and if the key is C you start on the C.
The minor penta is 1,b3,4,5,b7 and the major penta is 1,2,3,5,6.
If you leanr the stack and the rectangle and mind the warp between G and B string the fretboorad will open up. However, of course you need to learn all names of the notes on the fretboard also in the longer run. Justins App is an excellent tool for that!
Regards
1 Like