mattrach version has a nice tone, but the melody doesn't match the original.

The flow is not as good as the original. If not for the backing track you wouldn't know what song he is playing.

His version is more of a technical display to the point he raped and killed the original song.

I still prefer the original jerryc version.

1. You can move your fingers faster, more independence, and if you do it right, your pinky also useful, you become a 4 fingers player, like me. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

2. Many songs are based on some sort of scales. You will be able to learn new songs and solos much faster.

3. You can improvise, write better songs based on certain scale progression theories. This is for the advanced players already, I am not there yet.

4. Improves your hearing and able to recognise notes better, helps you to learn songs by the ear. When you hear a bluesy music you know for sure it must be based on a blues pattern so you can find your notes easily after you found the root/key. If you hear a Chinese/eastern music, straight away think of the pentatonic minors from there.


But so far I think the immediate benefits would be faster/accurate fingers and easier to learn new songs. This applies to songs with leads/solos only. Chord strumming is not very related, that's where arpeggios comes but later lah, when you come to sweep picking.

The improvisation and composing part is later.

Many newbies make a mistake of learning to play songs first, and developed very bad techniques.

Many ended up a 3 finger player and completely neglected the pinky. I've seen those gwailos, good guitar players but always use 3 fingers only and stretch apart on areas that requires 4 fingers, 1 fret each finger.


If i told you I played nothing but scales for 1 whole year, not sure you believe or not. I am one who dont find playing scales to be boring... since I am quite obsessed with it and have developed some sort of OCD towards getting the perfect no-mistake scales.

But this damn helped me a lot, so my first song is saber rider and the star sheriffs.... Almost finished learning the song already, can play the solo/lead faster than the default 157 bpm.


Scales also helps you to be a shredder, if you wanna play like yngwie malmsteen you definitely gotta learn even more and practice them regularly and understand the theory behind it and scale progression.


This mostly apply to electric guitar players.

If you're an acoustic strummer, it wont be so useful unless you wanna play something like Paul Gilbert's acoustic 'Be With You' from Mr Big.

http://www.cyberfret.com/scales/basic/page2.php


If you want to be fairly nimble, practice the blues scale, don't cheat and skip the pinky.

It trains overall finger dexterity and independence, start from the 5th fret.

Then move down to 6th and so on, repeat back forth with alternate picking.

This pattern is universal, so I guess you can solo on any key since all relative notes within the blues scale are 'relative', just as with other scales I guess.


Then the next, go for the major scale, this one trains the ring and the pinky finger, quite torture to be able to play fast on this scale. I am faster on the blues than the major scale. Basically major scales focuses on the last 3 fingers, especially the ring and pinky.

Now I am reworking my major scales, I am not so good compared to the blues scale. You can really feel the weakness/blurness of your tendon strength on major scales.


Currently in my opinion, these 2 are the important scales for finger independence and dexterity. The rest you can practice later I guess, once you're good with both the blues and major scale. The minor pentatonic is just basically blues with some missing notes. I think if you're already good with the blues, the minor pentatonic is a non-issue, that's why I suggest just go straight for the blues instead first.

The other scales trains your wrist shifting, so don't forget to learn them also.

Just practice these 5 basic ones, all you need for fast fingers/dexterity for a beginner.


If you're free ah, try shredding them back/forth in under 5 seconds, then 3, then 2.

It's fun to get clear/clean shredded scales, you will get addicted!

Then once you're ready, learning solo/leads would be a BREEZE.

Of course, improvisation is another topic altogether, I haven't even really worked on those yet. Having too much fun doing covers of songs i like, mainly 80s cartoon and anime songs.

Of course don't skip the pinky. I've seen youtube tutorials of a guy doing a minor pentatonic cum blues mix and used only his 3 fingers.. I LOL at the dude for skipping his fingers and so did everyone else, and furthermore he got the scale wrong, he was talking about minor pentatonic then demo blues/minor pent variation, and avoiding the pinky completely.


This is how NOT to do it below, but he's got it right on the improvisation, but fingering, shake head.

Totally agree!!!!!

That's why I am still playing scales when I am free, to make sure they're clean.

For those too stingy to buy a metronome, please download this WONDERFUL free metronome utility.

It's bloody genius!

http://www.pinkandaint.com/weirdmet.shtml

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Added on February 15, 2008, 11:53 pmI got no camcorder here lah.


Anyway, it's just up and down a scale, not up and down the neck, big difference man.


When you play nothing but scales for 1 whole year, especially blues scale, anyone also will get fast and under 5 sec, of course, like echobrain said, clean and clear is another issue.



This post has been edited by bman: Feb 15 2008, 11:53 PM

I think he's doing a hammer-on/pull-off with the pinky.


Anyway the song he's playing originally is by Neil Zaza.

Here're the tabs and original video, enjoy!

http://www.nutabs.com/tab/9296/zaza-neil/im-alright