Recommend me some scales to noodle in

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  • So what would be the next step on from noodling in scales? I’ve tried focussing on arpeggios, but they feel a lot more restrictive and harder to deploy. 

     
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  • vizviz Frets: 10647
    Play tunes that are bursting out of your heart, using the “right” notes (ie in the key). Put the guitar down, go for a walk and whistle or sing, then come back and play it. 
    Roland said: Scales are primarily a tool for categorising knowledge, not a rule for what can or cannot be played.
    Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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  • vizviz Frets: 10647
    edited April 2022



    I tried putting some chords down on a looper, which exposed an issue. If I put down G, Dm, Am, C, then I the C Major and A Aeolian and B Locrian are all the same scale shape, just the root note moves. 

    I’m assuming the chords for B Locrian should be in someway different to those of C Major to get the benefit? Or is it the case that I should be changing scale root with each chord? Or is it just down to how the scale is played in the different modes? 
     

    For any progression, what you really need to do, to understand the key, and the key's notes, is to follow these steps. I'll take your G-Dm-Am-C looped progression as an example. 

    1) Identify the root. This is pretty much the first thing you have to be able to do as a musician. Other words for root are key note, home note, 1-chord, "what the song is in", final resting place, foundation note, fundament, base, home base, etc. In your little progression the home note is G. This is pretty uncontroversial. The progression starts and ends on G (because it's actually G-Dm-Am-C-G). So G is the root. If you struggle to hear that with absolute finality, then try listening to more music and practise listening to where the music draws to a close. It's not always the first chord, but it often is. It's normally the last chord, but sometimes it's not. In your progression it is. The way you've written it looks like the last chord is C, but it's not, it's G. Because it returns to a final G after that C. It's sort-of like this:

    G-Dm-Am-C / G-Dm-Am-C / G-Dm-Am-C / G-G-G-G.

    You should be able to hear those chords going round and round and hear where home base is and correctly identify it as G.

    2) Identify the "tonality". There are 3 choices: major, minor, or ambiguous. The way to find out is to see what your G chord is. Well, you've already said, it's G, not G minor, so you're in a G major tonality. It could still be ambiguous, so to be bullet proof, you could look to see if there are any G minor notes in the rest of the chords. The major / minor determining note is the 3rd. In G, that would mean a B for G major, and a Bb for G minor. You just have to know that. Now, when you look at your other chords to see if any of them deploy a Bb, none of them do. Actually none of them has a B or a Bb - the notes just don't exist in Dm chord, Am chord or C chord. But importantly there's nothing to give a hint of G minor. So it's not ambiguous. You're in a G major tonality.

    3) Establish the chords of the progression, agnostic of key. You're playing 1 chord, 5 chord, 2 chord, 4 chord. You can just count up the alphabet to find that out. Now, you're playing the 1 as Major, the 5 as minor, the 2 as minor and the 4 as major. So the progression is a 1524, and written in Roman Numerals, it's I - v - ii - IV. (the Capital letters denote Major. 

    4) Identify the scale that fits with this progression. You have to ask, are you in bog-standard "Major" (AKA "Ionian mode") or one of the other major modes?

    OK. There are two other major modes besides Ionian. They are Lydian and Mixolydian. Which are you in? Well, there are some clues in your chords. You can't be in G Ionian, because G Ionian has a V chord, not a v chord. And you can't be in G Lydian, because that has a raised IV chord (as well as a major V chord). Whereas what makes mixolydian special is that it has a minor 5 chord - in other words, a v not a V. (This is just stuff you have to learn.) So your progression is in G Mixolydian.

    The notes of G mixolydian are G A B C D E F G. (yes it's the same notes as C major, or B locrian (which is horseshit so put it out of your mind), or A minor. But those facts are irrelevant. Because you are in G, not another letter.)

    And the chords of G mixolydian are G Am Bdim C Dm Em F and G.

    As you can see, I - v - ii - IV fits perfectly with it. I've bolded the chords above to prove it.

    5) Noodle away. There you are. G mixolydian it is. If you noodle in G mixolydian throughout that progression it will sound fine. Of course you can deviate from that to create interest and tension. but the default notes are G A B C D E F G. 
    Roland said: Scales are primarily a tool for categorising knowledge, not a rule for what can or cannot be played.
    Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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  • RolandRoland Frets: 8591
    So what would be the next step on from noodling in scales? I’ve tried focussing on arpeggios, but they feel a lot more restrictive and harder to deploy. 
    Play notes. You already know the major scale and the minor pentatonic. Experiment with the other notes. Feel how they sound. Try using them to slide or hammer into and out of the notes you already know. Scales are just the names which have been given to particular note sequences. What is important is that you know how the notes sound in relation to each other.
    Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
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