Running scales, modes, arpeggios and all kinds of other patterns are a fact of life for guitarists. Usually the point of such practice can be to help your brain and fingers connect with where a note is on the fretboard. Or they could be methods for improving speed, accuracy or stamina. The downside of this is that if you play the same patterns all the time, when you try to improvise, these patterns are going to find there way into your music. Not to mention it gets boring playing the same thing all the time, and you’ll stop getting any benefit from the exercise after a while.
To keep your playing fresh and innovative, you should vary how you practice these skills. I found a cool site that will help mix up your practice routine. It’s called GuitarCardio.com where first you choose from a set of options – the root of the scale you want to practice, the scale type(major, minor, pentatonic minor, etc), and the difficulty level. You can even choose the root string if you want to start on a particular string. You then just choose how many exercises you want generated, up to 10 at a time. Here’s the options screen:
The creator of the site says he is currently working on an iOS app. He also is creating several other online music study tools, the first of which is “IntervalQuiz”.
There is a similar app already available that I also use called “Scale Variator” which is published by none other then Berklee College of Music. It’s a similar idea but gets more specific in letting you choose which intervals will be in the generated patterns as well as a few other options you can see in the screengrab below.
The full version is $4.99 and there is a free version that is limited to scales in “A”. Click the appstore link below to see more.
What tools do you use in your practice routine? I’d love to hear about them!
