Guitar Scale Mastery Review

Our Rating Overall: Beginners: Intermediate: Advanced:

Overview

Guitar Scale Mastery is a membership website, from which you can download a series of lessons, audio tracks and other bonus material, all based around the subject of learning guitar scales in a very detailed way, so that they become second nature to you, and can then be used automatically when soloing.

It is aimed at players who want to get a much deeper understanding of scales for use in solos, than the usual straight 'finger pattern' guides given in many guitar books.

Course Author / Instructor

Course Contents - What You Get

The course fee gives you 3 years access to the Guitar Scale Mastery membership site, here's a screenshot:

From the site, you can access and download various lessons & resources, such as audio tracks, and PDF eBook files.

A lot of the content is on web pages within the site itself, with clear fretboard pictures accompanying the lesson text. The audio tracks and PDF eBook files can all be downloaded and accessed offline.

The lessons are organised into the following main areas:

• Introduction - Basic Lessons: these lessons cover the essentials of the musical alphabet, major scale and the concept of scale degrees, which need to be understood before tackling the rest of the course material.
• 5 Powerful Practice Techniques: a section on organising your practice time to get the most out of the lessons
• The System: the core of the Guitar Scale Mastery system, a whole series of lessons designed to enable you to really learn a scale inside out.
• Audio Backing Tracks: there are a set of 5 full backing tracks, in a range of styles, for use in soloing practice.
• Guitar Scale Activators: these are special audio tracks that are designed to help illustrate the sound of a particular scale in context, for use in practicing & learning the sound of that scale.
• Bonus eBooks & Bonus updates: some excellent material that complements the main lessons, including 'Pentatonic Guitar Success', 'Scale Degree Mastery', and more advanced lessons, such as musical phrasing and playing over key changes.

Course Description -  What's in the Lessons?

Logging into the Guitar Scale Mastery System site, there's a clear overview of the whole course, in a step-by-step layout.

In a theme that's repeated throughout the course, one of the first steps is where Craig gets you to determine the objectives you want to achieve from it, which will set the context of all the lessons. The course material is very 'interactive' in that sense, you are constantly asked to carry out tasks and exercises that help you understand the concepts.

The introductory 'basic lessons' section covers some key concepts about scale notes, sharps/flats and covers the major scale on the fretboard, concepts used in the rest of the course. This section is relatively brief, but important for players who may not have come across these topics, which are explained clearly with relevant diagrams.

The main section of the site covers the Guitar Scale Mastery system itself. This is split into smaller, more manageable parts, with a good mix of theory, technique and application of the two. The 'system' is an approach to learning a specific scale in depth, all over the fretboard. There are a whole series of exercises and topics here, such as single/two string scale lessons, ear training and applications on lick creation and improvisation techniques.

The material in this section is designed to be taken and practiced in small chunks, and is perfect for incorporating into your daily practice routine.

The idea with the system is to take one particular scale, and apply all the exercises in sequence over time to 'internalize' that specific scale. Then you can start the process over again with another scale. This is in contrast with the approach of learning a whole load of different scales at once, but not really learning the scales at all.

The section on 'Guitar Scale Activators' contains a whole library of audio mp3 tracks, over which you can practice various different scales. This makes the whole task of practicing scales more enjoyable, as well as hearing the sound of a particular scale in context, over appropriate chords.

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Overall - Our Verdict

The Guitar Scale Mastery system is a great resource for helping you really get to grips with understanding how scales are put together, where and how to play them on the fretboard, and most importantly, how to apply them in your soloing and improvising when you play guitar.

It's definitely not a course for absolute beginners, as it assumes some ability to pick notes out (up/down picking on a single string) and some knowledge of chords is definitely handy. Other courses reviewed here (e.g. Learn & Master Guitar, Jamorama) would probably be more appropriate.

However, any player who has mastered some of the basics of chords and single string note playing could definitely benefit from this course, if they have a desire to understand scales in more depth.

Craig has a very direct and 'no nonsense' approach throughout the course, particularly regarding the fact that to achieve results using the lessons in it, you have to put some effort in yourself, by carrying out the various exercises, and daily practice.

Another aspect of the course I liked was the way it's split up into manageable sized chunks. If you're just starting out getting to grips with guitar scales, it can be a bit overwhelming. With his step-by-step approach, Craig leads you through this process in a logical way, all the time engaging you with exercises and assignments to help you understand the material.

It's not by any means all theory though, the Guitar Scale Activators and backing tracks are very effective ways of putting the scale theory and techniques into action, and I liked the way that suggestions of how to incorporate these into your daily practice routine are outlined.

My favourite sections of the course were the 'application' topics, where you learn how to apply the scale theory and techniques to your own guitar playing in solos and improvisation - in particular the section on lick creation was excellent, and certainly gave me lots of ideas on creating my own licks.

One thing that's a bit lacking in the course is any video instruction sequences. Although the diagrams and fretboard charts are very clear, it would be great to have some video clips to really complement the written material. With it being a membership site though, it's possible that video could be added later.

Many guitar books and courses show you how to play a wide range of different scales, with various fingering charts on the fretboard. This course goes much further, teaching you how a particular scale is constructed, and how to apply it in your playing.

Learning a whole set of different scales from fretboard fingering charts alone won't get you playing great musical solos, as scales played by themselves don't really make for particularly memorable guitar lines. However, understanding a scale in detail, in terms of the notes and intervals that it's made from, as well as how to create licks and improvise using that scale, do help towards creating musical and interesting solos. That's what this course covers and does well.

Price and Guarantees

More Info

For more info on the Guitar Scale Mastery course, or to order, visit the Guitar Scale Mastery website.