The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

When it comes to soloing on a guitar, an instrument which doesn't require the player to breathe to make sound, it should come as no suprise that guitar solos tend to have very little space for rest. No need to breathe, no need to stop, right? Many guitar solos from the 80's hair-metal bands made their sound as big, fast, mean, and unrelenting as possible. No fault there perhaps, but it can be equivalent to a sentence with no space in between the words:

kindoflikethismassofwordsthatsomehowseemstoneglectyourreadershipbutblahblah.

The guitar solo's place in songwriting is often to bring the energy of the song to a fever pitch. Sometimes if the guitarist tries too hard it could end up like that jumbled sentence above. Again, if that's a stylistic choice, no faults. The beauty of not neccesarily knowing how to play solos is pausing becomes more natural. In this way, a guitarist can play without distortion, speed, volume, or perfect technical ability. Sometimes, it can be so lovely and striking! The solo might be spare due to neccesity, but what it lacks in technicality it can make up for in breath, space, and timing.

When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana hit the charts, something died: Guitar solos. What Nirvana did, in my opinion, was take the conventional wisdom of learning to play an instrument correctly and flip it on it's head. I really do like Nirvana to be honest, both because their music is good and because they killed the guitar solo without even trying. The 80's hair metal, power ballad, rock-and-roll nonsense had to end, and the guitar solo needed a breather anyways. Nirvana was the catalyst.

The guitar solo often uses distortion to make the solo really stand out. Distortion compresses the sound, meaning that any note that was picked softly is brought up in volume, and any note that was picked loudly is brought down in volume, unless of course the guitarist doesn't play anything. If they don't play anything, they get amp noise and a dreaded drop in volume. Basically all the sound is the same volume unless they don't play. One effect of this is that the guitarist might want to keep that solo going. If they stop playing, there is amp noise, which has got to be the equivalent of an awkward silence. No faults there obviously, because a good guitar solo is a good guitar solo, but the result is that the guitar solo never takes a breath!  If the compression and distortion keeps the same volume (ie, loud), and if the guitarist wants to keep on playing, then what else is the guitar solo than a new texture?

I wonder about this because when I listen to John Coltrane's solo on the Miles Davis tune "So What," I hear him searching for sheets of sounds. I hear him searching for new melodic and harmonic textures all throughout that solo, and plopping them right on top of the chords. To me, it's almost like he is trying to create a new texture. The thing is that he has to take a breath in order to keep on soloing. Guitarists, on the other hand, do not need to breathe. The result? Saxophones have a natural ability to pause during a solo, and guitarists have a natural ability to fill up all the gaps in a solo. My guess is that if John Coltrane played guitar, he would have filled up all the gaps with a new texture that would have been unheard of, even today.

I believe that any technical exercise that doesn't have a concrete purpose, a purpose that can be defined and written down, is not worth it's salt. Scales are not immune to this query. It bothers me that many online guitar lesson sites as well as guitar teachers advise their students to learn exercises that have no defined goal. Many of them ask their students to learn scales right off the bat because it's "good for the fingers." I don't think this is good enough of a reason to learn scales.

Scales are also stereotypically considered to be the barometer of ability in guitar. I think also that there are more than a few people out there who are consumed with the desire to know all the scales, and are willing to show off how much they know. Keep in mind this delicious irony: There are millions of professional musicians who don't know a single scale and still make more money than a silly guitar teacher who blindly recommends every student they teach to learn scales in the first place.

If you are a beginning student, I could only think of four possible situations that might be appropriate (or perhaps evil as in the case of #4) for learning scales. Here goes:

1. Building the ability of hearing a scale

I really like the sound of Locrian. There is something about the flat second and fifth scale degrees that makes my ear go crazy. The best way to get new sounds like locrian in my ear is to play it over and over again in a technical exercise like a scale. After a little bit of time spent playing the scale, I automatically get it into my ears. If you have ever spent time learning the pentatonic scale and played a wrong note (like, "Hey that's not right. It should be..."), then you know what I am talking about. It's about being able to hum the scale.

2. Expanding the technical palette

I heard a story about Branford Marsalis, the saxophonist. There's a rumor that he spent years watching sports center and thundering through his scales. He wouldn't breath into the horn enough to make a sound, but his fingers would find the right keys to press. The result? Lightning fast scales and technique. The same can happen with guitar. Doing scales can make your hands quick.

3. Scales provide a nice safety net for soloing

Whenever I am stuck in a middle of a solo and I am not feeling any bit creative, I revert to scales. It's cheap, yeah. I wish I could be creative all the time, but it's nice that I have those there. If you want to play lead guitar, scales are really good to have at your disposal. However, if you want to play along to songs and not worry about playing single strings, there is simply no use for scales. I advise a lot of people this way. If you want to play a lot of The Beatles' songs and sing, then there is no reason why you should touch one single scale.

4. Showing off in Guitar Center

Please, if you learn scales, don't go to Guitar Center and show off. You might be impressing yourself but there is a damned good possibility you are annoying the living hell out of the people who work there. Same with people trying out guitars anywhere else in the store. Besides, there is always someone who is a better. How embarrassing would it be if they plugged into the amp next to you and out-played you?

Please, don't use scales for evil.