Stop Sounding Like A Guitar Scale Machine: A Simple Way To Break Out Of Guitar Scales

Tommaso Zillio

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Let’s say you are playing a lead over a backing track…

… what do most guitarists do in this situation?

They choose a scale.

Have you noticed how it’s always “scale, scale, scale” for us guitar players?

No wonder many of us end up sounding like a scale machine every time we play.

And it does not help that since the scale they are using has 5 (or 7) notes…

… then they feel like they have to play all 5 (or 7) notes on each and every phrase!

It’s like if they are thinking “If you leave one note out, then you are doing less than you could!”

I’m not really accusing anyone here. This was what I was doing years ago - I am just describing my younger self.

But I know I am not the only one.

So how so we break out of the scale?

And especially, how do we do it in a way that is actually manageable, so that when we are playing we can:

1. Remember to do it rather than defaulting to the ‘good old’ scale, and

2. Find it easy - because the hard things never ‘come up’ in an improvisation - and

3. Sound good too! After all this is what is all about!

Well I’m going to give you an idea in this video.

Grab your guitar and follow along, and by the end you will think about it and play in a different way:

Yes, I know what you are thinking right now - you are thinking that it’s really easy to find a scale on the guitar, but finding triads is much more complex.

But this is simply because:

1. you haven’t practiced finding triads as much as you have practiced finding scales and

2. you do not know HOW to find triads on the fretboard in the efficient way

But don’t worry, I got you covered. I collected everything there is to know about that in the Complete Chord Mastery guitar course

Check out the Complete Chord Mastery guitar course and you’ll see that after just the first session, seeing the triads on the fretboard will not be a problem for you anymore.