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Getting off the plateau

Remember the plateau? That place where you feel like you’re ust kind of staying where you are, playing stuff that doesn’t feel much different than what you’ve already been playing forever.

Try looking at scales. 

I know. Gross, right? For good reasons, many people don’t like to practice scales. But it depends on how you use them. You may not be interested in improving your ability to move your fingers around the fretboard, but there are other uses for scales.

Making chords

Every note in a chord comes from a scale. Many of us don’t often think in this way since scales are about single notes, and chords are about multiple notes. 

Here’s the C major scale:

C D E F G A B

Here’s a Cmaj chord: 

C E G

If you know where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are on the guitar, you can start making C chords that aren’t the one in open position that we all learn in our first week of playing the guitar. Or the barre chords we learn not too long after.

If you don’t know where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. 

So I think you know what to do. That’s right. Memorize where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are. It won’t really take all that long, and once you know those ones, the rest are easier.

Make different triads

Triads = three-note chords. Just start throw any three notes from the scale together. What does CDG sound like? CFG? ABD? Find those notes on the guitar, play them like a you would any chord, and suddenly your ears/mind have all sorts of new ideas.

Beyond triads

But why stop there? Add one of the other notes in the scale to that C triad. After C E G, we have D F A B. So…

  • C D E G
  • C E F G
  • C E G A
  • C E G B

In the short term, this can all seem tedious.In the long term (and I’m only talking months; weeks if you’ve got time and you’re efficient), it’s so worth it. Creativity soars. Suddenly, you’re creating chords and progressions you never knew existed.

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