Why Practice Guitar Scales?

After teaching students for over 20 years, this question still puzzles students. If you ever spend time reading an online forum or the comments on a blog post on the subject, you’ll have plenty of opinions but no true answers. Our answers to why we do something should be more than just, “It works for me.” Scales provide the pathway to virtuosity on every instrument according to the great players and teachers of the past. Let’s dive in today and get a better understanding of why (almost) every guitarist needs to practice guitar scales.

The most common objection to practicing scales, and most other technical exercises, is what Christopher Berg calls “The Technique-From-Pieces Fallacy.” Restating his argument would be a waste of time here, and, it would benefit you to read his work in its entirety. However, this quote from the book will give a little more clarity.

“No notable artists or authors who wrote about violin or piano playing advocated playing a difficult passage repeatedly to acquire technique unless they first extracted the underlying principle or difficulty of the passage or modified the passage in a variety of ways. That the practice did exist among bad teachers and students is clear by the frequent prohibition issued against it.”^[1]Christopher Berg, Practicing music by design: Historic Virtuosi on Peak Performance (New York: Routledge, 2019), 43.

Berg’s sound argument is built on the great virtuosi of the 19th and 20th centuries. Technique should be built away from the pieces to fully engage in its development. When learning a piece, too much energy must be used for other elements with techniques already acquired for optimal learning. It follows the adage of putting the cart before the horse.

It’s Not About Rote Practice

Though practicing scales has been a primary source for technical virtuosi, it was by no means mindless repetition.

“Personally, I am a great believer in scales and arpeggios. What is there to excel them? When you can play them well you can begin to study with the proper technical background. Two hours daily is none too much to devote to technic until the hands and muscles receive that drilling and exercise which they must have for the great tasks of performing the masterpieces of the art.”^[2]Sergei Rachmaninoff, “New Lights on the Art of the Piano”, The Etude Vol. 41, No. 4 (April 1923): 223-224.

We cannot take this quote from Rachmaninoff and believe that we should just slave for a specific time without understanding his intent. Further reading of his article indicates that every scale or arpeggio practiced engaged the mind as well as the fingers. The famous violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian’s approach teaches this in his Principles of Violin Playing & Teaching.

“It happens only too often with too many students that the mind wanders to different spheres while the fingers and hands are engaged in mechanical routine-functioning and end­less repetitions. Practice of this kind, lacking both direction and control, is a waste of time and effort. Not only does it not achieve what it sets our to do, but also it can sometimes be posi­tively harmful.”^[3]Ivan Galamian, Principles of Violin Playing & Teaching. (London: Prentice-Hall International, Inc., 1962), 94.

Any practicing, scales or otherwise, must engage the mind without endless repetitions. This is where scale and arpeggio practice taught by most teachers, even myself at times, yields no meaningful results. If a scale fingering has been memorized, then something must be done to constantly engage with the scale to build complete fluency. The options are unlimited and I will not cover them in depth here. Below is an introductory list:

• Rhythm changes
• Different right-hand finger patterns
• Visualization
• Playing thirds
• Playing sixths
• Playing octaves
• Playing tenths
• Developing ascending/descending and combination slurs
• Dynamic variations
• Stacatto vs. legato
• Beginning on different tones of the scale
• Tremolando
• Tirando vs apoyando

What are the Other Benefits of Scale Practice?

The above list indicates several implied technical benefits of scale practice. However, there are a number that may be hidden in a cursory observation. The first is the accumulation of fretboard knowledge. This is especially true with the visualization of scales during the learning process. One of the greatest challenges in learning new music on the guitar is sight reading. Scales are an indispensable tool for learning to sight read and attain note recognition on the fretboard.

The second is overall endurance and accuracy of finger placement. With longer sessions of scale practice, the arm and hand muscles begin to fatigue. Just like a runner builds endurance so does the guitarist. A good rule of scale practice is to place any speed work in the middle of your session. Your fingers will be at their peak and will be more capable of pushing tempos. As the session ends, slower practice tapers off the fatigue to allow for a focus on accuracy.

Finally, scales build kinesthetic learning in the hands. This pertains to “the ability to know where the parts of your body are and how they are moving.”^[4]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/kinesthetic It involves horizontal and vertical movement of the right and left hands over the entirety of the fretboard. Also, the opening and the closing of the hand as hand must accommodate frets that are further or closer together depending on neck location.

Building a Solid Foundation to Mastery

Scale practice has been the foundation of almost every great musician from the beginning of the 19th century onward. Our current “get it done quicker” culture has put the hard and long work of developing superior techniques on par with the dinosaurs. Some will point to the likes of Sviatoslav Richter, a Soviet-Russian classical pianist, for evidence that playing scales isn’t necessary. For every anomaly that achieves virtuosity without the need for normal pathways, thousands reach the same height through common practice. I am not going to begin smoking cigarettes because I know a man who lived to 105 smoking a pack every day. The exception should not create the rule. For those who desire to move their technique to a higher level, scales offer a path least traveled with the greatest reward.

Open Position Major and Minor Scales (PDF)

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Most guitarists I’ve worked with have skipped the first step to fretboard and harmonic mastery, the open-position major and minor scales. This PDF contains all 24 major and minor keys with cadences.

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Category: Scales, Supplemental Materials

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.