Creating Scales

While you are learning different riffs and practice pieces it is always important to bring it all together. Keep everything you learn or have done on your mind and make it your own. Change the things you have learned and create new riffs or practices for yourself. If you are practicing a scale, for example, make sure to always make it challenging for yourself. A great way to change a scale is to add chords into it or mirror the scale and play it higher and lower.

One of the best ways to get creative with scales is to first play a chord. It can be any chord type. After you play the chord try and find some notes that make sense and fit with the chord you played. If you have a recording device then you could play the chord and then try and lay down a scale to it.

There are no rules that have to be followed when it comes to playing music so allow yourself to be free and make things happen the way they sound good to you. If you are designing a scale for a chord and a note doesn't sound right to you then just find a better one. After you do this with more and more chords you will start to realize that you are able to lay down a solo to any number of different riffs.

Learning to scale in this way will keep you YOU. It is great practice to learn scales but it is even better practice to learn how to create your own scales. It will have more of your playing essence than going through a predetermined scale sequence.

In my next post I will get into some solo tabs from Randy Rhoads and Dimebag so get your fingers ready.