Category: Guitar Stuff

This is stuff I’ve not categorised yet. Oops.

Should I Bother Playing Scales?

Nicole Neal3 Comments

G’day folks!

A number of you have asked me recently about good ol’ scales – are they worth the time and effort? Why should I do them? Should I bother doing them at all?!

Well, the short answer to that last question is an unequivocal yes!

I last posted on this subject (almost unbelievably) around about two years ago, so time to revist one from the vaults!

My viewpoint, thoughts and approach to scales and their importance hasn’t really changed at all in the last couple of years, so I’ll reiterate the key points here again for you, folks.

In my formative years I struggled to see the point of practicing ones scales. At best, I thought it probably a half decent way of warming up the hands and fingers ready to play. At worst, I thought them a bloody waste of time, a complete drag and just getting in the way of the fun stuff.

In the wisdom and perspective offered by a couple of decades of classical guitar playing under the belt I have, for the last few years now, been able to see the error of my previous thinking.

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Scales are boring and tedious and dull and unexciting?

Nope. Wrong! As with many things, it’s all about your attitude and your approach to them.

We’re musicians right? And we make music? Playing a scale is no different to playing any music. The bare bones of the notes are there for us to shape and phrase, following the contours, playing in different timbres or tone colours, crescendo, decrescendo, legato, staccato and so on. The choices are almost limitless as to how to make music from scales, as with any other musical passages. And then we have consideration of our tone quality to add into the the mix too.

And so what’s the point of all of this?

Well, aside from practicing making music from notes on the page or in our heads there are a number of significant benefits that can really only be derived from regular playing and practice (which means a little every day – better a little every day than a whole lot once or twice a week) of scales.

In a nutshell, these benefits are:

  • Finger dexterity
  • Left and right hand coordination
  • Touch control and sensitivity for the left hand – i.e. programming in that you don’t have to press harder to get a louder volume from the guitar
  • Touch control and sensitivity for the right hand – developing your free and rest strokes
  • Developing a good quality of sound and tone production
  • Securing your knowledge of the fretboard/ fretboard geography
  • Generally facilitating an ease of playing, with things falling much easier under the fingers when you come to play your pieces without you really having to think about it.

Before I leave you to mull on that (and get to your scales and practice of course!) I do have a couple of new thoughts to add into the mix…..

Think about this for a second – what are most melodies made up of? It’s really lots of bits of parts of scales isn’t it? Perhaps just two notes in the scale then a leap of a second, third or fourth, then another grouping of part of a scale. Perhaps an arpeggio or two (which are also important to practice by the way!) in there. And then another wee scale section. Or a whole octave run.

Scales are the very foundation of the music we play. Get rock solid with your scales and I promise you your playing will become so much more secure and sight-reading will become a relative doddle. Why? Your fingers, your muscle memory, will play some things for you via somewhat of an automatic process (well, that’s what it can feel like sometimes, but takes consistent practice) and your fretboard geography will be out of sight!

I’m not saying it’ll happen overnight, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, and you’ve got to start somewhere! Just start incorporating scales into your practice, that’s the important thing.

I find them so important to my general maintenance of playing, and further to that really the continued development of my playing and sound cultivation that oftentimes, even if I have only a short time to spend with the guitar practicing I’ll devote time to some mindful scale-playing.

So should you bother? Yes!

How To Play Barrés Without The Pain!

Nicole Neal4 Comments

Firstly thank you to those of you who’ve sent me emails or dropped me a line via the comments box on your classical guitar questions. It’s really good to hear from you out there! And it means I can really tailor what I’m writing for you guys to cover off those burning issues for you and offer a little help, if I’m able. Do keep them coming.

So, today’s post relates to what seems to be a particularly hot topic for a number of you out there judging by the number of questions I’ve had on this issue.

What issue is that?

The humble, oh so useful, but oft troublesome barré.

Is that sore, hot, burning, achey feeling in the ball of your left thumb (or right thumb for left handed guitarists) familiar? Extreme tension, achey? Hate barrés?

Well, I sympathise. I’ve been there before in my formative years as a guitarist. I thought if I just press harder, just squeeze a bit harder the barré will sound, no buzzes, no dead thunking strings. Sound familiar? Well, all I got was a sore hand, and at some points a cramping, twitching thumb! Does that also sound familiar?

If it does, well it’s highly likely that just like I was, you’re thinking about the approach to the barré in completely the wrong way.

It seems to make sense that if one squeezes very hard with thumb behind the guitar neck and forefinger across the strings that this will achieve the desired result, right?  Incorrect. This squeezing and pressure creates a bad tension which is not only bad for you physically but makes it difficult to play.

But if you think about this away from the guitar, just looking at your hand right now as if you have your hand in a sock puppet, there’s not actually that much force that can be generated by such a small set of muscles is there? These muscles are really about refined movement. The end of a job that needs to be carried out by larger muscles.

Don’t think about squeezing, pressure and tension, particularly in the hand, thumb and fingers.

No, to play beautiful tension-free barrés all day long you need to think about weight, gravity, and using your bigger levers to do the bulk of the work for you.

Instead of pressing hard between finger and thumb, actually remove your thumb from the guitar neck and think about moving your hand in toward the neck of the guitar. The motion is kind of like you’d be patting yourself on the shoulder if there were no guitar there.

When doing this you need to be using primarily the muscles in your arm (your biceps should be doing most of the work), drawing your arm backward. And the weight of your arm should be assisting you in this with gravity drawing your below towards the ground. Use that gravitational force to assist you in hand and fingers into the soundboard. Always make sure your shoulders are not up around your ears, that they’re nice and relaxed.

It’s kind of hard to describe in words! And each one of you will, I’m sure, play in slightly different positions and approach this slightly differently.

If you have a teacher I strongly encourage you to work on this with them, or at least have someone that can watch you and provide pointers.

If not, just experiment with it. Either way I actively encourage you to play around with this and experiment with different angles of the guitar, neck, your arm and hand.

Yes, it will feel weird and completely strange to begin with. I can pretty much promise you that! But do persevere with it as the alternative is not a great option! This is just the beginning of a good barré technique – there are other elements to this technique which I can delve into in further blog posts. Try this for now though.

Once you feel like you’re getting your barré under control a little a great exercise to try is Sor’s Study in B Flat Major. A beautiful little piece that’s a great exercise for developing barrés.