Scale Phrasing

If you think of singing instead of picking, then you're on your way. The best phrasing is breath structured, meaning they're played as if someone was singing them; taking breaths between longer parts, coming back in (soft or loud), and then going till another 'breath' is needed.

And if you keep the breathing concept in mind, it also helps with dynamics; playing certain notes really softly, and then working (or jumping) to a louder level as the scale goes up or down. The main thing in phrasing though, is to imagine a singer singing it, and being able to pull a melody even out of scale.

Even if a person knows every scale ever devised and chords and riffs and bass lines to go along with it, it's still the simple melodies that people remember, and in fact it's the simple melodies that musicians can have the most fun with -- especially if you use the scales and licks to just accentuate a melody instead of trying to piece a melody together using just licks and scales.

In cover songs, you might just 'state' the actual melody, and then, next time through, embellish it a little, and if you're doing rounds in a jazz setting, embellish it the third and fourth and fifth time around, while still maintaining the 'flavor' of the original melody.

Hope this helps.

"Comfortably Numb" By Pink Floyd is a good example of phrasing, I dont think I can listen to that song without singing along with the solo, sometimes I remember the solo better then the vocal melody, as if its got words of its own....and suprise, suprise, its still being played on the radio to this day.

Kido

You are traveling a path that everyone goes down. Noone can really tell you any "interesting" phrasing ideas. You can either copy some or invent them on your own. I recommend doing both and incorporating it into your playing. The best thing is to buy a cd full of jam tracks in different keys and improvise over them using the scales you know. Most of the jam tracks tell you what scales work with each track. The first step is learning the scale. The next step is randomly playing notes in the scale ie noodling. The next step is actually making music. IT WILL COME!

Thanks for the responses,

I just have to give it time and enjoy the journey.

-Dustin