Memorizing.

Should I be able to instantly play any major scale anywhere on the fretboard before I can say that "I know the major scale"? Or is that over ambitious?

I hope that's not overly ambitious, as that is one of my goals. Just make sure you are learning the notes, not only the scale patterns.

My teacher drills me in various scales all over the fretboard, just like that. For example, he'll say "play A Ionian (major), starting with the root on the 4th string." Being able to find the root notes up and down the fretboard has really been a huge help to my understanding of scales (though I consider myself very much a beginner.)

I have been memorizing the 5 major scale patterns and all the notes on the fingerboard. Knowing both, I believe I should be able to pick out a major scale for any root note, and also figure out the modes of the scale in short order.

You should be able to play any major scale, anywhere.

It's not overly ambitious, but it does mean that you need to work.

Knowing scale patterns isn't what you need. You need to know the scales.

To get there you should be able to do a couple of things:

1) instantly recite the notes of any major scale. If I say "Bb" you should be able to start saying "Bb C D Eb F . . ." without pausing to think about it.

2) instantly be able to relate notes to scale degrees. If I say "F" you can say "1st of F, 2nd of Eb, 3rd of Db, 4th of C ...." again, without pausing to think about it.

(you'll notice that the first two items here have nothing to do witha guitar -- there's plenty of time in your day to practice this stuff . . .it takes work but it won't take that long if you work on it everyday!)

3) know where the notes are on the fretboard.

One of the reasons most guitarists struggle with theory, in my opinion, is reliance on patterns. Far to many people learn the patterns and then use those rather than learning the scales. If you know the box patterns try practicing scales all over the fretboard using them as little as possible. Play down one string 4 notes then change strings. Play only 2 notes on each string, do whatever you can to avoid using patterns until you know the fretboard and how it relates to the scale you're working on.

Once you can start on any note in a scale, and play the scale up and down the neck switching strings whenever you feel like it (rather than when some pattern dictates), then it's pretty safe to fall back onto the patterns. Until then they will hurt your learning more than help it.

Work on one scale at at time. Learn them in the cycle of 5ths (or circle of 4ths), and then start jumping between them going through they cycle. Jump every 3rd or every 4th or every 5th. This will force you to be able to quickly shift your brain between scales. While you're doing that try moving to the new note while staying on the same string . . .this forces you to have a greater range over the fretboard.

Mastering the guitar is a long long process that never really ends. And there's a reason guys like Segovia practiced scales 4 hours a day! While most people think scales are boring (and in some respects they are) there's a great deal of musical knowledge to be had by spending a good portion of your time getting to know these guys like the back of your hand.

I completely agree with King - and just to expand on Segovia, he insisted that his students practice scales 2 hours each day.

I don't take things to those extremes :) but I still do scales every day. They're part of my daily warmup - I play all the scales in about 4 major and minor keys in open position (where every scale has a different fingering... that makes you focus on the note names), and I rotate through the circle of fifths, playing every position in one major and parallel minor each day. Toss in a few technique drills, and I'm ready to hit the meat of the practice session.

So I end up doing about 15-20 minutes of scales every single day, and I have for a lot of years. It definately helps your playing and your ear.

You should be able to play any major scale, anywhere.

2) instantly be able to relate notes to scale degrees. If I say "F" you can say "1st of F, 2nd of Eb, 3rd of Db, 4th of C ...." again, without pausing to think about it.

Just maknig sure I understand this - There are 7 scale degrees, right?
For the example above - for the note of F
1st of F, 2nd of Eb, 3rd of Db, 4th of C.. and then 5th of Bb, 6th of Ab, 7th of G?

What's the trick to figuring this out? For a given degree, I just guessed what note it should start from to see if it ended at F, but checked it by constructing a scale from it, which can't be the best way.

I think the best way is to learn the scales first. You don't have to have them down cold, but you have to know them well enough to know which notes are sharp or flat in a given key.

Then it's just a matter of practice and repetition.

It also helps when you run through your scales to add the degree to the note name.

C Major: "C 1, D 2, E 3, ..."

Eventually it all comes together, but it takes a bit of work to get there.

Also doing arpeggios seems to help, because you have to think about note names and scale degrees together when you construct them.

This is a really good question. I just started guitar about a month ago and scales are still a bit "mystical" for me. My main source of information has been from hodges easy songs for begginers articles and I havn't reached an article dealing with scales yet. Is it necissary to learn the different scales so early or should I wait until I'm more familair with the guitar?

Oh, and I dig the Thompson quote Kingpatzer.

Thank you all very much for the answers. You really put things into perspective for me "kingpatzer". *grabs guitar and starts practicing*

Saber,

It's never too early to start learning something about scales. But really, when you first start out you want to make sure the "fun" factor is pretty high. So I'd wait a bit . . . but not too long!

thanks King....I was wondering if just knowing the patterns was sufficient, and felt that there had to be more to it than just knowing them. Memorizing the scales wont be to difficult...but, being able to know what degree a note is in any given scale (Db is the 4th degree in the Ab major scale for example) will take some time to memorize.