Hello, my name is Mark from Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net, and you're listening to podcasts on big scales. Welcome to jazz Guitar lessons, where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe! Hello and welcome to this podcast on Big Scales. So what a scary name, right? For a podcast? Big scales. it doesn't mean that you need to have larger hands in. The scales are bigger in any way. It's just that we we will encounter scales that cover the entire range of the instrument in this podcast. So I've prepared some examples for you, just for to grab your instruments. Of course, if you're listening to this on the bus or the subway or in your car, please don't, as usual. But, this is a podcast where I want to give you a few pointers, but you'll see that this exercise develops in many, many interesting directions. And it's basically a way to discover your instrument that's the big takeaway here. It's you will discover areas of your fretboard that are kind of, you know, your blind spots typically. And you can find them through a relatively easy exercise. in concept at least, you'll see that the application of the exercise is not that easy. But it all depends on what you want to make of it. So let's get started. This case, big scale, means to start at the lowest note available in your instrument and go to the highest note available or safe, or playing the scale of E major. So you know good ol E. So you start with your E notes and you fly above the fretboard. You don't pay attention to positions or anything. You just you aim to climb up there. And to come back down in the same way or pretty much the same way. So I'm really not paying attention to, which fingerings I'm using and which position I'm just finding, as I go through it, I'm just finding the next available. So that's the concept of big scale. Now, I've seen an interview with John Scofield or, workshop or clinic of some sort where he was talking about using big scale through changes and what I do. That's interesting. What are you going to do if you have to play like that on, say, the changes to Stella by Starlight? So that's a whole point of this podcast, which is, I came up with a few examples on B-flat blues. The point is, you start with the lowest available note on your guitar, so probably E or F or IV sharps or the, the one of the notes, a the low frets there. And then you climb up this the appropriate scale for the current chord. And then when the chord changes you keep ascending. And you do this throughout the song until you run out of threats. And when you run out of frets, you come back down into pretty much the same fashion. But this means that you will find spots that this is not even a solo, you're not improvising, you're just trying to play the right notes. Right? it means that you will always wind up in different places on your fretboard at different times in the form meaning that in bar eight of Stella by Starlight, you might be halfway, you know, on the third string in the 10th fret or something like that. So you will uncover places where it's kind of not practical and that you're not used to seeing or naming the notes in that area of the fretboard. This is brilliant. I mean, it works wonders. And to give you an example, I have started a B-flat blues here. So B-flat to E-flat to B-flat, etc. and I'll put a backing track on and I will use the big scale concept in quarter notes. It means that I will play one note 123412341. And notice I will change the scale. Now it's a pretty easy one, right? B-flat blues. I'm going to play B-flat seven Mixolydian and an E-flat seven is Mixolydian also, etc. I'm not going to bother you with my scale choices, but the interesting part is you. Before you start working on the exercise, you decide what scales you're going to use or say you have a G7 note in that that eight fret G7 chord, what scales or what scale are you going to use precisely for that? G seven flat nine in bar eight. Then you have to choose. Then you have to choose A before you start working on the exercise. But just to show you, I will start with the lowest note of the B-flat seven scale available in my instrument is the F note of first fret big string, so that that's a B-flat seven, right? No blues blues. So that's the lowest note. And I will ascend my way through the the changes. And then once I reach out of fret I will do the same thing. Just descend my work through the changes always being correct in for ready for the example. So I had the real pro set up here and for 80. Now I'll do fast one, 234. E-flat seven. B-flat seven. E seven. Diminished. B-flat seven. G7. F, C minor. Sorry A7. B-flat. Turnaround. And we Do It Again. That's B-flat. E-flat. B-flat again. We're going to change scale soon. That's now E flat. I have a diminished. I'll skip the diminished for now. B-flat. G. C minor seven. F7. B-flat. Keep going. B-flat seven. E-flat. B-flat C I'm always in different spots when I change now. That's flat seven to a diminished. I'll skip B-flat. G7. C minor. F. B-flat, G, C, f. Keep going. We're back in the top one last course. Change your E-flat. B-flat seven. Going to C minor now. Going to F. B-flat, G, C, F. So you see, it's probably not as fun to listen to as it is to play. But the point is, my brains are always, always, always turning my my little hamster in my head is always deciding, oh, what's an exit? Where are we? What's the next note? What's this? And this is a pretty easy example. Imagine and I'll put it on for for a second. Imagine if you were to play this in eight notes. Imagine how much how well, you must know the changes to the tune you're practicing. I said Stella by Starlight earlier, but you could play this on any or all of your songs. You could do it in quarter notes, and then you can try to do it in eight notes. And if you're tired of starting low and ascending, just do the opposite. Start very high and go. And I'll do this right now. I'll lower the tempo a little bit more even. I'll put it at 72 and I'll start high and I'll descend in this end and do the same process. But I'll try an eighth note. You'll see me messing up this time, because this is really challenging already. So B-flat blues again, why do big scales? E-flat seven. E-flat. Eight. B-flat. C g sorry. C minor seven. S. B-flat. So, you see, this is. This is pretty challenging because the concept is simple, but you always do. Has to keep in mind what is the next note available in the scale. Now, before I let you go, I'll tell you. Big scale is this exercise where you you hammer, you hammer out scales. And wherever you are on the fretboard, you go to the next available note. You could also do big arpeggio, meaning the same concept, but instead of doing all the notes of the scale you chose, you might do all of this, but only on the 135, seven arpeggios throughout the form. So instead of being a, you know, your B-flat seven scale, you could be. 1357 on B57. So you have to play from your lowest note. So this is kind of difficult even to play in quarter note. So imagine playing in eighth notes. And so big scale big arpeggio or to two of the concepts where you covered the entire range. And now, another exercise or two other exercises from David Berkman, the great piano player in New York. He says you could also do small scale in small arpeggio, meaning that instead of covering the entire range of your instrument, you cover only a tiny fragment of it. So you select the interval in which you want to confine yourself. So or small this and say one string or something like that. And then you try to repeat this process. You always ascend to the next available note in your scale or a bedroom, and you always do it within the confined range. Or once you run out of notes and on one direction, you change direction. So that I leave you in this and I'm sorry for I and, you know, listening to me playing the exercises is not the one of the one of the most fun things to do in a podcast. But I'll leave you with this thought. Imagine if your musical ideas were not dependent on the chord changing. Imagine if you have a musical idea that is ascending and you can keep pushing through the ascending idea. Well, that's it. That's what we're doing. You're doing. You're playing a line in the direction of the line does not change when the chord changes, you decide when it changes. So that's really the skill that you're developing as an improviser. When using the big scale exercise. But once again, my name is Mark from Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net. Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher and I'll see you in the next podcast. Thank you.
