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Jaden Kim explains why practicing scales as finger patterns kills musicality. Instead, learn scales as numbered positions within a tonal map, understanding notes relative to the tonic and how they relate to chords.
Jaden Kim explains why practicing scales as finger patterns kills musicality. Instead, learn scales as numbered positions within a tonal map, understanding notes relative to the tonic and how they relate to chords.
If you've been practicing your scales for years, but you still can't solo the way that you want, it's because you've been practicing them wrong. So maybe your solos sound like this. I don't even want to keep playing. But basically just, like, sounds like you're playing scales. And if you do try to play things that you want to hear, it's not quite what you actually heard. And so the primary reason for this is because a lot of you guys are basically learning your scales as, like, geometric patterns or, like, finger patterns. And when that happens, don't get me wrong, there's an element of that that's needed if you want to start doing things like shredding and playing fast. But as far as actually playing the music in your head, if you're just trained to go up and down these patterns mindlessly, you're just doing yourself a huge disservice because you have no idea where you are. It's just something like. But, like, if I stopped you at any given point of that, would you be able to tell me where you are? And so that's the mindset shift that I need you guys to start getting to start embracing. And so this all starts, first of all, by committing yourself to the discipline that, okay, I shalt not play notes where I don't know where they are on the tonal map. Right. And so, first of all, well, a big step for this. And I talk about this in other videos, Conceptualized minor is being based around 6. It's going to cut your work in half. But going further than just, you know, and at the very least, understanding that this is 1, 6, 7, 1, 7, 6, 5, 3, 4, 5. And so maintaining that awareness at all times while you solo is just. First of all, that's just like step one, but more specifically. And as you start to study chords individually, you'll get an intuitive sense for this, but make more intentional choices about where you're landing. So I'm gonna start with 4. 3, 2, 1, 1, 6, 5, 6, 6. 3, 2, 6, 5, 6. 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 7. Sharp 5, 3, 5. Sharp. 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, seven. 1, 2, 3, 1. And so was I aware of, like, which pentatonic pattern I'm in? Yes, I was mostly playing around, like, position one. I kind of went into position two. But the most important thing is that I knew exactly where it was the entire time. And I also understood, like, how the notes I was playing interacted with the chords. Right. And so this is kind of a bigger overview, but Once you start to get an intuitive knowing of how each of the notes of the chords fit within the tonal octave, like for example, the two chord would be notes 2, 4, 6 and 1 within the tonal octave. You start to have these two layers of awareness going on at the same time. One on the chord and you have this intuitive knowing of exactly what all the notes of that are. And then two on your melody notes, where you are in the scale. And really the, the chord part of it is kind of stuff that you do isolated and then that just like runs in the background. Ultimately you want to get to the point where you just know where you are and you know where you want to go. That's the whole idea of this. And so taking that vow of just like, I'm not going to play no more notes without knowing exactly where, where they lie in the tonal map exact aka like what number they are. And so basically, if you're just learning scales as patterns, that's horrible. If you're like learning scales like notes like, oh, I'm practicing my G major scale today, honestly, that, in my opinion, is not doing you much of a service. You got to learn everything is numbers. If you're going to learn your pentatonic positions, be able to label how each of these numbers, each of the notes in the pentatonic scale fit with the numbers minor to the tonic base at around 6. I'm telling you, it's going to save you a lot of trouble. And yeah, if this is something that you want to learn more about, you want to dive deeper into like, the specifics of like, how do I start to develop this? Check the link in my bio. I've got a little Cord year starter pack guide that's going to give you guys some free lessons and resources on how to actually start developing this. Awesome. Leave any comments in the comments and see you guys next time.
