Scales Scales Scales (Part 2)
(26 Mar 04)
Four Notes Per String
Some people have asked about four note per string scales and patterns. This actually is an interesting subject, cuz I heard a lot of people go "What would you do with 4 note per string-scales? It's hard enough to play melodically and not fall into a "Up and down the scale" kinda rut with those 3NPS-scales anyway !?"
Well, of course you don't NEED to learn 4NPS-scales. And you should start from the beginning anyway. Maybe learn the pentatonic patterns, then move on to the 5 patterns of the major scale, and then take a look at the 7 3NPS patterns.
However, if you wanna look into 4NPS-patterns, you might find out that you can get some very interesting results there... they might inspire you to play a bit differently, maybe play some stuff you never even thought about before.
Since this section is some kind of an "encore" to my Scales-workout, I don't wanna get into this topic for too long, but maybe I can get you started here.
First, let's just look at four example-runs I made up for this. Two of them are ascending, two are descending. Note that I put in a lot of position shifts... shift slides.
There sure are some people who would actually play those kinda runs without slides... it requires some rather big hands (or good flexibility) and a lot of practice, but then you can accomplish that.
However, since we're talking about the basic idea, I decided to include the slides. This is a good way of executing those kinda runs. The rule of thumb should be: when ascending, the slide is being done with the pinkie, going from the 3rd to the 4th note on the string. When descending, the slide is done with the first finger.
In the first example, we shift positions on every other string. The key is G major. (This goes for all the other examples of this section as well)
As you can see, this is a nice way of breaking out of the 3NPS-rut, and you get a pretty cool ascending run that way, covering a pretty big area of the fretboard.
Here's a descending version:
The idea is simple. Think diatonically, key of G major. Play 3 notes of that scale on the 6th string, move on to the 5th string, play the next three notes of that scale, then shift up one note... you're not skipping or repeating any of the notes. At the end, you have a long run through the G major scale, and with the final slide (I decided to skip the F# and slide to the G instead) we have covered 3 whole octaves.
Now, let's take this a step further: let's shift positions on each string!
Here's an ascending run based on that concept:
With the same amount of notes as in the previous examples, we now cover even more ground: 3 octaves plus a major third (from the low G to the high B)
I know that at first, it might seem awkward to memorize this stuff, or apply it to different keys and scales. However, if you have worked through the scale workout (or your own, customized scale-workout) for a while, and if you're therefore used to thinking along a string, in vertically AND diagonally, it should be a bit easier.
Here's a descending version:
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