Scales: Two Hand Exercises, Vol. 1, Daily Studies

About This Lesson

A well-rounded scale regime is necessary for any serious guitarist: beginner, intermediate or advanced. Scales are indispensable for a number of reasons. With scales, guitarists can evaluate their tone, accuracy, control, finger angle, vibrato and overall progress. This evaluation is necessary as it allows guitarists to understand their strengths and weaknesses more readily. It provides a measuring stick for someone’s current skill level and what they may need to work on going forward. You see, playing fluid scales, arpeggios and chords is an amalgamation of tiny, precise and consistent finger movements. Learning to minimize unnecessary finger movement stabilizes the hand, increases finger accuracy, improves concentration, and enables serious guitarists to perform repertoire at a higher level. Think of scales as a series of individual, coordinated finger movements: an ensemble of contiguous “levers and pulleys” working together in tandem as one team. Yet the success of the team is predicated on the premise that each individual finger on the team must coexist and function independently of other fingers. Instilling maximum finger independence and flexibility is quite important, yet challenging, and musicians need to methodically reshape and control such unnatural bodily independencies over the course of time. These 25 daily studies were selected to create a complete daily scale program for you to practice for many years to come.