Guitar practice scales are often overlooked when it comes to beginning guitarists. They might think, “I just want to know how to play guitar tunes!”

That statement may appear very ambitious for a new guitarist, but developing a strong guitar foundation involves some dedicated practice of exercise riffs and scales. It’s not really rocket science, but here’s what you can gain with steady practice of guitar scales and practice riffs.

1. You’ll increase your finger dexterity.

Many famous lead guitar players, like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, initiated their personal styles with the help of guitar practice scales. The repetitive motion of the notes can create very light finger movements in a player after only a few weeks of practice. Famous guitar soloists sincerely rely on the play action of a well-made guitar along with their developed feather-like fingers. Play through a few scales over and over for only a half hour and you should already see developments in your finger motion.

2. You can improve your guitar fluency.

Guitar fluency is just a fancy phrase that refers to how smoothly you can move from one guitar note or chord to the next. In order to play rapidly, a guitarist needs to start with a complex riff at a very slow tempo to realize the fluent motion involved. Guitar practice scales move your fingers through all sorts of awkward lines and positions in order to familiarize your fingers with the layout of the guitar neck. With only a few practices, you could find your mind wandering into new guitar compositions that you would not have thought of otherwise.

3. If you’re not educated in note structures, you can develop an understanding of sheet music.

Not every guitarist needs to learn how to read sheet music, but it certainly can give a competitive edge. If you decide to learn guitar practice scales from a book, you’ll find them displayed on a music staff with actual notes representing tone lengths. If you can’t read sheet music, it’s not a problem because most guitar books display guitar tablature underneath the music staffs.

4. You’ll improve your muscle memory abilities.

There are so many different skills to learn on the guitar like hammer-ons, pull-offs, and squeals, but they revolve around muscle memory. As long as your fingers remember these actions with hours of repetition, you should have no problem improving your skills. Utilizing a guitar practice scale can increase the rate in which your fingers and hands start to remember common progressions and perform without hesitation.

5. Guitar practice scales can help develop your sense of tempo.

Personally, I’m a big stickler about consistent tempos. If you’ve ever listened to an uninformed instrumentalist, you’ll find that on more intense sections of a song or a riff, they pull the tempo faster, and oppositely on a mellower section, the tempo drags. If you practice guitar scales, keeping in mind a steady tempo, you’ll find your inclusion in a band setting to be much more relaxing and care-free than others. Also, using a metronome to practice your guitar scales can put some serious perspective on how close you are to tempo consistency.

Playing guitar tunes right out of the gate sounds like a great idea in theory, but sometimes, it’s simply not reachable. Taking the time to create a solid foundation to build upon will help your guitar music library increase much faster than you would believe. Take these reasons into consideration and get a hold of some guitar practice scales to speed up your progress.

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