How should I practice with the Map and tracks?

This is the most important question people ask.

Sometines a picture is worth a thousand words. So before we get going, why don't you take a quick look at this video clip of how to use the map and backing guitar tracks to help you practise guitar scales in a musical context.

There is a tendency to think that playing guitar scales and learning to improvise means you have to rigidly follow the chord changes and progressions of a song so that for example, if the song switches to the C chord you must time that change with a C note and when the song resolves back to the root chord such as G you must also play a G note.

Well, that might work but playing music is so much more fluid than that. You have in your hands a road map that just has to be followed any way to feel sounds right depending on the feeling in the jam track you are playing.

So play a jam track first by itself. Listen as to how you might add a melody line over top of it. Just hum it in your head at first. Then pick a note.

Hold the note for as long as you would like. Then try moving to the next nearby note. Then go back to the first note. Now try three notes in a row.

But do this while listening to the music and trying to create whatever melodic feel is possible with just those 2 or 3 notes that you are working on.

If you are feeling confident, slide up or down until you find the next note you are hearing in your head to carry your melody. Then try playing another note – any note to grow and develop the melody.

At first you will only be playing notes that are right beside each other because you still don’t know the sound of the individual notes nor do you have the physical dexterity to move quickly to another non-adjacent note.

This is very simple but the first phase of learning scales.

Don’t worry! Just keep playing notes while the jam track is playing.

You are guaranteed to eventually drift off into a melody line – albeit very simple at first but you are doing it! Remember the point of learning guitar scales is not so you become good at playing scales but so that you know the scales and notes in order to play melodies that have feeling and emotion!

We are just trying to develop you tool box of guitar skills.