Scales Scales Scales (Part 2)
(26 Mar 04)
More sequences
If you get the feeling that just playing those patterns ascending and descending or using one of those good ol sequences such as "1234 2345 3456 etc." gets boring, or doesn't really help to memorize those patterns, try to come up with some new sequences.
One of my favorites is this one:
I think the idea is pretty obvious. Back when I worked on this stuff a lot, I really felt that this kinda sequence helped me tremendously to visualize and memorize the patterns. And it was fun to work with a different sequence like that.
Here's the "descending version":
One thing that's IMO quite important for your musical vocabulary is thinking in intervals. You can work on this by playing through those patterns in intervals, either playing single notes or doublestops (diads), two notes at a time.
The following exercises can and should be applied to all the patterns. Believe me, if you do so, you'll really memorize those patterns thoroughly. Also don't forget to use this stuff in your soloing.
Here is pattern 1, F Major, using fourth-intervals
As mentioned above, you can either play individual single notes or, as shown in the TAB, play two notes at a time.
Here is the same pattern, this time we're playing fifths:
Let's not forget about thirds:
Now, regarding that last TAB: you could of course play doublestops here too. But since thirds are rather small intervals, you'd have to merge patterns... you'd need to add some notes from the lower or upper patterns in order to play those doublestops. Try it if you want to, I simply tried to stay within our single pattern with this exercise.
OK, now that we have learned and memorized all these patterns, how can we use all this stuff in our improvisations?
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