Originally Posted by: William MG

I can give you some help here.

I am looking at the same scale with the drop down box selcted to "Display Scale Steps". I believe this is just sequential. Personally I never use this option, only because I start sounding like I am playing scales when I really just want to try and play licks. So I select "Display Notes". Once I have the notes down I can try and do something with it, like try and write a lick using some or all of those notes.

Which leads to your 2 question. I don't like scale practice and hardly ever do it. What is much more fun for me is to pick a scale, put on a jam track - and try and write licks - or improvise. The only issue I have with improvising is that if I am going along and think "that sounds ok", I can't remember what I played most of the time. So I like to break it down on a sheet of paper a few notes or steps at a time.

Question 3. Nope. Sometimes you get a real cool sound if you slide into the root or depending on where you want to come in on a jam track, you may not start at the root at all. A good piece of advice I had from Christopher early on was to try and think of the chords and augmenting them via notes. When its done well you will be quite happy with how it sounds.

I think the more you experiment and play around the more you will find things that sound good. Those are the ones you want to keep and have written down so you can go back to them. Another good piece of advice I had from another teacher not on GT, was to build a repertoire of licks so when I was in a given key I would know I had a lick(s) for it that would be my go to. If you want to play with other players and aren't strong on improvising this will keep you playing along and having fun.

Thanks for the response. I'm still a bit confused about the numbers in each circle. If I change the drop down box to "notes" instead "steps" it makes sense because it of course tells you what note you're playing is. The numbers though...??? Maybe that's why I never focused much on scales...lol.