These 6 C major scales are essential to learn for for exploring and discovering patterns on the fretboard in the major key. The scales are good for general practice and they will help you to know where to go in a guitar solo or for melody composition.
Tag: scale exercises
Sheet 3 – A Minor Pentatonic Scale Practice Exercises Grade 1-3
Welcome to the third sheet in a series of posts on the A minor pentatonic scale, which includes various exercises designed to build up your knowledge of the scales and also to give you ideas and memories of ideas for soloing and melody making.
There are 4 exercises based on the first position of the A minor pentatonic scale. You will need to pay attention to the down and up pick markings to be able to play them fluently and at speed eventually. The first two exercises are all down picks, because they are more like riffs, which sound stronger with all down picks. Exercises 3 and 4 are generally ‘alternate picking’ on the 8th note (quaver) beats, which means ‘down up down up’ continued. It feels wierd at first but keep at it until it starts to feel natural.
There are free downloads availabile for this sheet, a printable PDF file and an awesome Guitar Pro file. Guitar Pro is a program where you can press play on the sheet and it will play the audio of the music. You can slow it down, transpose it, loop sections. It’s really useful.
Free Downloads
Download PDF Download Guitar Pro File
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Sheet 2 – A Minor Pentatonic Scale Practice Exercises Grade 1-2
Welcome to the second sheet in a series of posts on the A minor pentatonic scale, which includes various exercises designed to build up your knowledge of the scales and also to give you ideas and memories of ideas for soloing and melody making.
In this second sheet, we jump in straight to the exercises. Go back to sheet 1 to learn the A minor pentatonic scale that we will be working with.
Then there are 4 exercises based on the first position of the A minor pentatonic scale, which all finish with an A minor chord to finish off the exercise and practice changing from the exercises to the chord. You will need to pay attention to the down and up pick markings to be able to play them fluently and at speed eventually. The patterns are generally ‘alternate picking’ where possible, which means ‘down up down up’ continued. It feels wierd at first but keep at it until it starts to feel natural.
There are free downloads availabile for this sheet, a printable PDF file and an awesome Guitar Pro file. Guitar Pro is a program where you can press play on the sheet and it will play the audio of the music. You can slow it down, transpose it, loop sections. It’s really useful.
Free Downloads
Download PDF Download Guitar Pro File
More Sheets
Sheet 1 – A Minor Pentatonic Scale Practice Exercises Grade 1-2
Welcome to the start of a series of posts on the A minor pentatonic scale, which includes various exercises designed to build up your knowledge of the scales and also to give you ideas and memories of ideas for soloing and melody making.
In this first sheet, we will first play the A minor pentatonic scale that we will be working with.
Then there are 3 exercises based on this scale. You will need to pay attention to the down and up pick markings to be able to play them fluently and at speed eventually. It feels wierd at first but keep at it until it starts to feel natural.
There are free downloads availabile for this sheet, a printable PDF file and an awesome Guitar Pro file. Guitar Pro is a program where you can press play on the sheet and it will play the audio of the music. You can slow it down, transpose it, loop sections. It’s really useful.
Free Downloads
Download PDF Download Guitar Pro File
More Sheets
(PREMIUM) – First Guitar Book – Easy Reading Scales, Riffs & Melodies
A Ukulele Version is also available.
- PDF ebook
- 20 pages
- Easy to read design
- Song melodies
- Scales
- Riffs
- Useful for beginners of all ages.
- Includes 3 blank template PDF files for writing your own scales and exercises
Contents
- Front Cover
- Contents
- Introduction
- How To Read The Music – Part 1
- How To Read The Music – Part 2
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (FREE)
- Happy Birthday
- Sheet 1 – Guitar Scale Exercises (FREE)
- Sheet 1 – Rock Riffs
- Camptown Races
- Sheet 2 – Rock Riffs
- Amazing Grace
- Sheet 2 – Guitar Scale Exercises
- Morning Has Broken
- Sheet 3 – Rock Riffs
- Sheet 3 – Guitar Scale Exercises
- Can Can
- Sheet 4 – Guitar Scale Exercises
- Sheet 4 – Rock Riffs
- Mexican Hat Dance
People that might find this book useful
- Beginner Guitar students of any age group.
- Guitar teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students and teach it to them.
- Get used to the basics with this easy to read book before moving onto standard tab and notation.
- Parents may be able to teach their children with this book.
- Some may be able to teach themselves the basics with this book.
About The Book
This easy reading ebook is a compilation of 9 years teaching guitar and preparing lesson sheets for my students. I developed the easy reading design for complete beginners. It is based on normal guitar tab, but simplifies it so that there are no distractions, and it’s huge and easy to look at rather than the numbers being small.
I tested some of these sheets over the last 6 months until I was ready to create the rest of the book. I have found that the format that I have created takes away any unnecessary distractions in order to teach the basics without distractions and confusion. I believe it solves problems with reading the music for beginners of any age, but particularly for young beginners.
I decided to create this range of sheets like this one to make both my life easier and to help my students get to grips with reading tab quicker for playing scales, melodies, public domain songs, traditional songs and riffs. I have created the sheets using Adobe Illustrator.
There are different ways of playing the scales so it’s ok to do what works for you but don’t just use 1 finger for all of it! Younger players think it’s faster at first, but it’s really not in the long run. If you have frets 1 2 3 and 4 to play in an exercise, you could use all 4 fingers to play it (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger). Use this technique of ‘one finger per fret’ where it seems comfortable to do so. If a scale only has 0, 2 and 3 in it, then you could use just your strongest 2 fingers to play it (1st finger for the fret 2’s and 2nd finger for the fret 3’s).
Guitar teachers can use this ebook in their own teaching and they are welcome to print physical copies for their students.
(PREMIUM) – Guitar & Ukulele Basic Beginners Book 1
Since writing this ebook, I have developed some ‘Easy Reading’ guitar and ukulele scales and melodies ebooks, so although this page says ‘Book 1’, you might want to take a look at those easy reading books first, especially for younger players.
2 for 1: The premium download includes 1 book for guitar and 1 book for ukulele.
People that might find these books useful
- Guitar & Ukulele teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students
- Students can teach themselves to learn the basics if they have some reading knowledge
- Supplementary learning material for students that have guitar lessons
- Beginner ukulele players and guitarists looking for some easy songs or exercises to get started with
Contents Highlights
17 topics of study for guitar and ukulele that is aimed at complete beginners. The book has a mixture of public domain songs, easy scales, easy melody exercises and easy chord exercises.
Teaching Notes
The books are designed so that even age 5 or 6 could play some of the pieces and exercises, so it starts off very easy with simple melodies such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, that almost everyone can play to some extent in their first lesson. There is however content for all ages in this book and the majority of content is designed to be played by all ages.
The book also takes a while to move onto chords. Like I said at the start of the post, I have developed some ‘Easy Reading’ books recently and at the time of updating this page for a new website launch (Jan 2019), I also have some ‘Easy Reading Chords’ ebooks in the pipeline, which have worked really well with my students. Check out the ebooks section and look for the Easy Reading Chords books – they’ll probably be available by the time you read this.
Example Page from the Guitar ebook:
Full Contents
3. Contents
4. Introduction
5. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
6. Ice Cream
7. Canon in C – 2 sections
8. Silent Night in C – melody
9. 4 finger note / string / fret exercises
10. C major and A minor scales for beginners melodies
11. Canon in C – 3 sections
12. 2 melody exercises in C major
13. 2 melody exercises in A minor
14. Autumn Leaves
15. One Drop
16. Em and Am Chord Exercises 1-12
20. 5 Easy Chord Progressions with E, A, D, Em, Am, Dm (Free Preview)
21. Robin Reddocke – chords
22. C major scale practice with chords
23. Silent Night in C – chords + melody
24. Melody Exercises – A minor scale
About the book
The book is designed for use with teaching students with reading from as early as the first lesson if they are capable. All of the sheets are supposed to be achievable fairly quickly and easily by guitar and ukulele students of any age. Even students from the age of 5 or 6 could play some of these sheets. A teacher using this book would need to gauge the ability of the student. Often having something written down helps the student so even if they cannot read much of the music, they will be able to understand fret numbers and hopefully chord boxes too.
The best thing about these books is that the guitar and ukulele versions are compatible so if you happen to have beginner guitar and ukulele students in the same group, then you will be able to use these books to play along together. I don’t have many of these groups and they don’t always have a lesson together, but sometimes it works really well to have guitar and ukulele students playing together or learning in a group.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this book helps people get started quickly with learning guitar or ukulele and playing along to songs with others. The aim of this book is to progress quickly through it and to provide satisfaction through achieving. I hope to break down the barriers to getting started with learning guitar and ukulele with this book.
12 Minor Pentatonic Scale Exercises – Featured on the Guitar Pro Blog
This lesson has been published on the Guitar Pro Blog, so for the full article, click here.
The scale exercises are written for anyone that has learned (or is learning) the 2 octave minor pentatonic scale shape, and are ideal for anyone studying for grade 3 or grade 4 guitar. Those 12 concrete examples are aimed to widen your soloing chops and skills.
To read more and download the guitar pro file, use the following link:
http://blog.guitar-pro.com/2015/04/12-minor-pentatonic-scale-exercises/
1 Octave major scale exercises for Grade 5-6 in 5 positions with legato and vibrato techniques
These 5 major 1 octave scale exercises are in the key of A major.
The 1 octave scales in 5 positions can get a bit laborious when you have to practice them, so why not add a bit of flair and work out your techniques at the same time? These are a requirement for RGT grade 5 and above, but anyone would benefit from learning them. When you know the scales, it means you can transfer melodies to different places on the neck to achieve different tones, and it also opens up different possibilities in terms of which techniques can be used (e.g. hammer-ons between certain notes cannot be achieved in all 5 positions).
Try playing these with and without a click at various tempos.
Also try linking two, three or even all 5 exercises together.
Exercises 2-5
