Scales to Riffs

Hey OWA,

You may or may not like them....but Led Zepp's Black Dog (Main Riff) made sense to me once I started learning the Pent Minor Scale. I learned the riff before I learned the scale. Then when I did learn the scale it dawned on me... Heyyyyy this riff is all about the Minor Pent scale......Heyyyyyy Pretty cool.

Then I started to try it with other songs/riffs.... sure 'nuff. Its very simple actually.. NOT EASY, but simple and, as my brit brothers/sisters like to say.... "Quite Brilliant". :wink: :wink:

No Chord
e-|----------------|-----------------------|----------------------|
B-|----------------|--------------5--------|----------------------|
G-|----------------|-5-------7------5h7p5--|--------5-------------|
D-|----5--6--7-----|-----7-----------------|-7---7------7---5--7--|
A-|-7-----------7--|-----------------------|----------------------|
E-|----------------|-----------------------|----------------------|

e-|------------------|------------------|-----------------|----------------|
B-|------------------|----------5-------|-----------------|----------------|
G-|------------------|-5-----7----5h7p5-|-----5-----------|----------------|
D-|----------5-6-7---|----7-------------|-7-7----7---5--7-|-7-----------2--|
A-|--6-7-5-7-------7-|------------------|-----------------|----5-7-3-5--0--|
E-|------------------|------------------|-----------------|----------------|


well, if someone teaches you the alphabet, and then shows you the word "cat", it's gonna be different than just saying "abc".
keep playing the scales until you're comfortable with them, then start to rearrange the order of the notes until you find some cool phrases. keep doing that until it's just you playing stuff you like.

Honestly... if you play notes from the penatonic minor scale in any order except straight up and down. BAM... you have a riff that I bet someone has used! lol

Its pretty simple with the Pentatonic. Now others may give difficulty cause they require a bit more thinking esepcially when following chords (think Jazz and Country style lead.)

Its all a matter of noodling. Also a great way to practice hammer ons, pull offs, sliding, tapping, tremelo picking, skanking, legato, accelerando, blah blah blah, techniques.

Which in other words, is just building your long long list of chops.

It can seem a little tricky "breaking out" of the patterns used to learn scales. We seem to spend all our time learning them up and down the fret board then when we come to use them "in anger" it can seem a bit daunting. It will take a bit of time but it's worth the effort you put into it. Stick with it and it will pay off.

The way I have worked on this is to improvise over backing tracks (guitarbt.com is a great resource for this). I get a slowish track and try to improvise over the top of it. Start off in position one of the scale (or whichever one you are most comfortable with) and just try various different note combinations. You will soon find a few combinations of notes that work well together. When you are comfortable with one position of the scale start venturing out into an adjacent position. Stick mainly to the first positon and just add the odd note from the second position and you will find as your confidence builds you can incorporate the second position more and more and your licks will improve. Repeat for the remaining positions for the scale.

As I said it does take time, and it can seem frustrating at times, but stick with it. It will be rewarding in the end.

Hope that makes sense.

Enjoy.

8)

Some great advice already....

It helps to know whatever scale you're trying to learn all over the fretboard.... Then you know it in ALL keys...
If you know the key of the song you're playing then you have something to base it on.... (ie. move the scale pattern to the correct root note)... Your root notes are the most basic signposts when playing in Key.

Any riff you play in the same key as your scale will primarily land somewhere on notes in your scale pattern...
It can seem a little tricky "breaking out" of the patterns used to learn scales.
True, but any riff you play that is in Key will land somewhere in your pattern across the WHOLE fretboard (aside from any passing tones) ...My important point is that you KNOW the scale across the whole fretboard.

I think of scales as degrees from the root note... i don't think in notes...

in the Key of C, the notes... C F C G to me, is 1 4 1 5
this makes it sooo much easier to play a line in a different position.

But then again, this is what works for me... Others do it completely different and it works for them... JMHO.

Peace

J

This might be a poor example but since you and I are around the same level it may help. I posted this Blues Improv In A in the Hear Hear section a few days ago. I used the Pentatonic Minor scale in the Key or A starting in the 5th position. You just start playing with the notes until something sounds good. Blues are the easiest to develop but it can be done in any genre. I start playing about 26 seconds into the track. If you fast forward a bit I relax a bit more so the playing is smoother.

EDIT
I can't play a riff from the scale. When I play a riff, it feels like I'm learning it from scratch and not from the scale. Any advice?

I had the EXACT same problem! One suggestion is to listen to a backing track and see what you can come up with from the rhythm of the track (similar to what I did above). Then you can build on it as you "HEAR" more tones/notes.

from scales to riffs?
do you hear the riff in your head?
say yes.
then it is apparent in the scale.
bend a note up to the next interval and hear what happens.
get creative. hammer on, pull off a scale note.
to me it sounds alot different than the normal do re mi/finger on each scale note lesson.

go up a scale in a minor pent and come back down in a major pent.
you will hear things to use.

After reading some other replies, i might have misunderstood your question....

When learning a song (any song that you didn't write) are you trying to match the riff to a scale ?? Or are you wanting to create your own riffs based on the scales you're learning ??

All I can say on the matter, is that it'll come naturally.

Try to break it right down. So start playing a one note riff. Get a sense of the pattern. Then maybe replace one other note in the whole bar. Then decide whether you want to replace the note after the new note. Otherwise replace one earlier.

Doing this means you're working well within your limits and youre writing what sounds good by ear, instead of just saying any one of these notes in this scale will sound good.

OWA, what scales are you learning? It can be tough to get started with just the basic major scales.

Have you learnt the pentatonic scale?

Yeah with the pentatonic you can do pretty much anything and it'll sound like some sort of solo. It's awesomely flexible.

Dag,
You know, I'm sure I looked up the Black Dog tab before, but it made no sense to me. HOWEVER. Now that I've learned some pentatonic scales, it seems plain as day. So, uh, opposite problem as OWA, I guess.... A lot of tabs seemed incomprehensible to me until I learned some scales... Anyways, I know the next thing to annoy my neighbours with: Black Dog!
TZ

I have been learning the pentatonics.

It's not so much making it sound like a solo, it's just to my fingers......playing a scale up and down and playing a riff from said scale are two different things. So uh......talk to the hand?

OWA

I think I know what you are saying. You are forming a habit of running up or down a scale in order and find it hard to break this habit. That is really very normal. I think every guitarist has certain habits (I know I have some) that take some practice to break. Being aware of it is the first step.

You just have to give yourself little exercises to break this habit. I have often compared scales to the alphabet. We learn the alphabet A-Z and actually have a difficult time saying it any other way. I can say the alphabet backwards, but if I had to say it in a random order I'm sure I would leave letters out, or repeat some letters.

So we learn scales in order just like the alphabet. But we do not use the letters of the alphabet like this. We use the letters in all sorts of orders to spell words. And a musical scale is the same. Sometimes you do indeed play a scale in order from low to high or vice versa, but usually you play the notes in an order to create a melody. So the scale simply identifies notes that sound good over certain chords or in certain keys. But you can play those notes in any order you want to create the melody you want.

A real simple exercise is to learn certain key notes in a scale and apply them to a progression. Here is a simple 8 bar Blues type progression in the key of A. Each little phrase ends on the root note of the particular chord being used. But all of the notes used in these riffs are from the A Minor Pentatonic scale which you have probably practiced.


A

Pretty simple little riffs. The riff over the A chord always ends on an A note. The riff over D ends on a D note, and the riff over the E chord ends on E. You learn a couple of things here. You will learn where the root for A, D, and E is in the A Minor Pentatonic which you will use very often in the key of A. You learn to break out of the order of simply playing a scale up or down. Heck, you can even play a note more than once. :D

This is just an example. But make up little exercises of your own with a scale. Learn specific notes within that scale. Learn to move around, even skip over strings.

The only way you will be able to break out of the habit of simply playing a scale up or down is to practice doing so.

Hope this helped.