Guitar Scales, Electric, and Tabs
The guitar family is one of the oldest families of musical instruments in the world. The genealogical roots of this instrument can be traced back thousands of years to central Asia. Ancient relatives of the guitar include the tanbur and the sitar, but the modern guitar is based more closely on the Roman cithara and the European lute. It has since evolved into one of the most popular instruments in modern music.
Today there are two basic types of guitar; the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar. The acoustic is the older of the two varieties, having been around for several centuries. These instruments rely on the amplification of the string vibration through the body of the instrument, commonly called the sound box. While there is no need for external amplification, these instruments are not known for having a great volume of sound. Electric guitars, on the other hand, use a series of magnetic pick-ups and electronics to transfer the string vibration to an external amplifier. This gives them the ability to produce sound at a much higher volume, making them ideal for today’s popular music.
The popularity of the guitar is largely due to the relative ease by which the basics can be learned. This is not to say that the instrument does not take time and dedication in order to become a proficient player, in fact it can be quite the opposite. However, learning to play basic chords and melodies is often easier for the average person on a guitar than it is on most other instruments. Furthermore, guitar music is often easier to read because it is often written in the form of tablature.
Guitar tablature (usually called tabs for short) is a system of writing out chords in a way that is easily understandable for those that don’t read traditional music notation. Tablature uses a graph, for lack of a better term, that indicates what frets on what strings need to be held down in order to play a certain chord. So rather than simply saying C major, guitar tabs will show how to play a C major chord. This style of music notation has been largely responsible for allowing nearly anyone to be able to play their favorite pop tunes without having to learn how to read music.
For those looking to become truly proficient guitar players, it is vital to learn guitar scales. Scales are the basic building blocks by which melodies are built and are absolutely essential for learning how to improvise solos. In western music, major scales are the basis for every other type of scale, and as such must be mastered. Other scales, including minor (harmonic and melodic), octatonic, diminished and of course all of the modal scales, are all created by altering various notes of the major scales. A master guitar player will be able to conjure any number of these scales at a moment’s notice in order to produce solos that are not only interesting to listen too, but are also musically sound. Without this knowledge, solos tend to sound disconnected and frayed, unless of course one is extremely lucky.
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