Why Practice Classical Guitar Scales

Every great musician practices scales. Practicing scales on the classical guitar is of utmost importance for several reasons. Scales serve as fundamental building blocks in music and offer numerous benefits for guitarists, regardless of their musical style or genre. Let’s dig into a few more reasons why you should practice your classical guitar scales.

Technical Development

Scales provide an excellent way to develop and refine the fundamental techniques of classical guitar playing, such as finger dexterity, accuracy, speed, and coordination. Regular scale practice helps build muscle memory and finger strength, which are crucial for tackling more complex and demanding pieces. Scales require you to use both hands in coordination, which can help to improve your hand-eye coordination and timing. This can be especially helpful for playing fast passages. The more you practice scales, the faster and more accurate you will become at playing them. This can translate to other areas of your guitar playing, such as soloing and playing chords.

Fretboard Knowledge

By practicing scales, guitarists become intimately familiar with the layout of the fingerboard. This knowledge allows them to navigate the fretboard more confidently, finding notes and positions quickly and accurately while sight-reading or playing without sheet music. However, practicing scales by rote does not encourage fretboard knowledge. One of the best ways to avoid playing by rote is through the visualization of the scales away from the guitar.

Ear Training

Scales aid in ear training, helping guitarists recognize intervals, patterns, and tonalities. Developing a strong ear enables players to identify melodies, harmonies, and chords more easily, making it easier to learn new pieces and improvise.

Musicality and Phrasing

Scales provide an opportunity to work on expressive playing and phrasing. By practicing scales with dynamics, articulation, and musicality, guitarists can bring life and emotion to their playing, which carries over to their performance of classical repertoire. This is an often overlooked aspect of scale practice. There are an infinite number of ways to articulate or change the dynamics within a scale. Few students practice them this way and lose out on their advantages.

Improvisation

Knowledge of scales is essential for improvisation. Guitarists who regularly practice scales gain the ability to create melodies and solos on the spot, enhancing their musical versatility and creativity. Improvisation has been lost to most classical musicians. At one time, this skill was the norm. I think it’s time to bring it back to classical guitar education.

Warm-up and Technique Maintenance

Scales are a staple of guitar warm-up routines as they gradually warm up the hands and prepare the fingers for more challenging playing. They also serve as a way to maintain and improve technical proficiency over time.

Understanding Theory

Scales are the basis of music theory, and by practicing them, guitarists deepen their understanding of key signatures, intervals, modes, and chord progressions. This knowledge is crucial for interpreting and analyzing classical guitar pieces effectively. This can be further enhanced by playing the scales in thirds, sixths, or tenths.

Repertoire Preparation

Many classical guitar pieces are built around specific scales or scale patterns. By mastering scales, guitarists can better grasp the underlying structure of a piece and approach it with more confidence and efficiency.

Technical Troubleshooting

When facing technical challenges in a piece, the skills developed through scale practice can often be applied to troubleshoot and overcome those difficulties. This is more true than it might seem. However, to play a scale smoothly in three octaves requires much troubleshooting!

Wrap Up

Overall, practicing scales on the classical guitar is a foundational practice that improves technique, musicality, theoretical understanding, and overall musicianship. It lays the groundwork for becoming a proficient and well-rounded classical guitarist. It’s important, however, to strike a balance between scale practice and repertoire practice to ensure a comprehensive and enjoyable musical journey.

After Learning Your Scales

The next question most people want to know the answer to is, “How do I play my classical guitar scales faster?” If you’ve ever struggled to play faster classical guitar scales, then you are asking someone who struggled for years. However, I finally learned, through the help of many teachers, how to overcome my lack of speed. I’ve put the entire process into an online course, Speeding Up Your Classical Guitar Scales. You can see an outline of the course below.

Course Curriculum

• Welcome To Speeding Up Your Scales
• Section 1: The Relaxed Tip Joint
• Section 2: Coordinating The Hands With Relaxed Tip Joints
• Section 3: Practicing String Crossing Is Necessary
• Section 4: There’s More To Scale Fingerings Than You Think
• Section 5: The Magic Of Rhythmic Variation
• Section 6: In It For The Long Haul – Endurance Exercises
• Section 7: Advanced Techniques
• Keep It Going

The course will not teach you the scales. It will put you on the path to playing them as fast as your body will allow. I know it will through personal experience and student success. My own scales went from playing sixteenth notes at 116 bpm to over 160 bpm!

Whether you check out the course or not, you need to be practicing scales! There is no substitute and just playing pieces with scales cannot cut it. Happy practicing!

Check out some of our other articles on scales:

• 3 Things I Am Learning From Beginner Guitar Scales in Open Position
• The Basics of Music Theory – Part 1 (The Chromatic Scale)
• Learning To Connect Two Guitar Scale Forms – Part 1
• Segovia Scales And Their Hinderances

Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to us at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. You can read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.