Understanding How Guitar Chords and Music Scales Work Together
By: Mike Deiure
If you are learning to play guitar and are starting to get into playing leads,
solos, and improvising, then it is very important to understand what guitar
scales to practice and when to use them. Before we go shredding away playing
crazy guitar solos, we need to take a look at what type of chords are being
used in our song or chord progression to help us decide what scales on guitar
will work the best.
The basic idea of how chords and scales go together is this: If a chord is
only made up of a couple notes (such as a power chord) then you will want to
play a pentatonic scale over it because this scale only has five notes in it.
If a chord is made up of three or more notes (such as a major or minor chord),
full major and minor scales will work better because they are made up of seven
notes and have more notes in common with the chord. One of the great things
about soloing and using scales in rock music is that once you have found your
key signature and corresponding scale, you don’t need to worry about changing
it if you don’t want to. The one scale will work great for the whole song. When
playing over more complex styles of music, such as jazz, one guitar scale won’t
work for the entire song. You need to change scales as the chords change. Read the rest of this entry
