What Scales should I practice?

I have a lot of students ask me what scales they should practice. It depends mostly on what type of music you want to play. For hard rock and blues, you should be familiar with and practice mostly pentatonic scales. For other simpler forms of music such as pop, and r& b knowing the major scales and their relative minor scales is important. For more advanced playing styles such as jazz, fusion and metal you should be familiar with Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor and Diminished scales. Many Jazz and Metal heads like Hungarian Minor and Romanian Minor as well as Symmetrical Scales such as the 8-tone diminished scale and its sister, the 8-tone dominant scale.
You can download pdf files of all these scales from www.pbguitarstudio.com

Scale Practicing

I get a lot of students asking me about how they should practice scales. The best way of course, is to really take your time and do it very slowly and as cleanly as possible.

Scale Practicing

Many people always wonder why they cant solo very well and tell me that they never practice any scales. I think the answer is in the statement - unless you have a superhuman talent and ear like someone such as Jeff Beck (who doesnt really practice scales). But for most of us, practicing scales are the true path to soloing skills.