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I am looking at putting together a simple practice routine that I can do daily that will accomplish a couple things
- Keep my hands in shape and build my speed (picking, mainly alternate)
- Get some scales and arpeggios under my hands
I am already ok at practicing standards, but I want a routine wherein I can do essentially the same thing every day and track it. This would be similar to something like going to the gym and tracking the weight used to progress upwards over time. This would, I think, be helpful in building up my speed and mind-muscle connection in regards to scale and arpeggio shapes.
I have some basic stuff put together but am especially having a hard time putting together some thorough, standardized way of practicing scales and arpeggios. A while back I studied piano and the fingerings and approach to scales seemed standardized and approachable and all keys were covered in a single book. Is there anything like that for guitar?
Anyways, I realize this is a bit vague, but I'm simply curious if anyone does stuff like that here or if I am going to have to put something together myself.
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01-12-2026 12:33 PM
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There are a whole bunch of ideas about ways to practice scales (and arpeggios) discussed in this thread:
Ways to Play a Scale
Another idea is to take a bebop head. Pick a short phrase and sequence it through the major scale. Once you can do that all over the neck in a way that you can hear each sequence before you play it. Pick a different phrase or scale, repeat. You work on fretboard knowledge, language, ears and technique at the same time. You can also set a target tempo if you want to boost the technique side.
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My system went Major scale, 5 positions, all 12 keys.
Then in 3rds, then triads, then 7th chord arpeggios. Then pivot arpeggios and melodic cells with chromatic approaches. Now when I hear a scalar lick, I’ll run that through the fingerings/positions in all 12 keys. I’ve been working this for at least 4 years now.
I’m slowly doing melodic minor scale the same way. Inspired by the thread Tal linked above. I’ve got 1 fingering in 12 keys and 3rds so far.
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I think this might be worth including.
Set Irealpro for 13 repeats of a tune, changing the key by a fourth each chorus. Tempo slow enough to manage.
Then work out which devices you're going to use to solo over it and apply them. Major scale modes only? Fine. Maybe you do them in 5 places on the neck. If you can't do it, lower the tempo until you can.
And, you might go around again, comping only.
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So your approach was to essentially approach the scales by way of the CAGED system through the keys? If so, do you practice the scales up and down the neck in one go or do you practice a position at a time? I like the idea of practicing arpeggios starting from the scales then up to 7th chords.
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
A lot of work can be done with scales it seems so I might have to dedicate a day or two to just that.
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So, step 1 is to learn the patterns. When I’m doing that, it’s straight up and down the neck position by position. See below
Once I have the fingering I’ll do scale up, 3rds down. Or 1234 2345 3456 up and triads down. This is C melodic minor just as an example.
My goal is to work Barry Harris scale patterns into my system. I only have a concept of a plan for that right now. I’m very green on Barry Harris stuff. I just know examples of scale patterns sound musical, so they’re probably a good thing to practice in isolation like this.
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+1 Allan and Tal
Allans outlined a system and Tal has suggested some content to be applied through that system.
Probably starting with Allans will give you some resources that will make Tal’s suggestion about transposing licks quite a lot easier down the line.
All good stuff.
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Peter’s got a nice PDF packet on line building that you a take around the fingerings too.
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OK..alot of good advice on scales..
How is your chord work..
How are you with inversions..Triads..Four notes..?
These harmonic foundations can be spring boards for scales, arps and melody (fragments)
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Who's Peter? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Forum user pamosmusic Originally Posted by chris32895
He’s also an educator.
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Yeah, I didn’t bring up chords because they weren’t in OPs agenda. But I agree they shouldn’t be neglected In our studies. Originally Posted by wolflen
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it sounds so fancy when you put it like that Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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It’s supposed to, you’ve put more effort into a system than I have. I just like to run my yap here hoping it inspires someone to do “one more key” before calling it a day.
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A practice routine is important on many levels.
It's just my opinion, but I think the most effective practicing comes out of a need that you perceive in your own idea of what the actual MUSIC is about.
Yeah, there's good advice here about what's good to practice, but maybe try this: Find a recording that you're moved by, or a performance on YouTube, or anything. Then really jump into it a few times, listen 2 or 3 times... practice deep listening.
Then ask yourself: What are they doing? What do I think they were thinking?
Then ask, what can I practice that will bring me to achieving what it is that I'm loving about this music?
Do I love the way it swings?
Do I love the energy?
Is there a cool line I heard that makes me say YEAH!? Where does it happen? What's happening? Can I use what I hear to understand the process of making a solo?
What I'm saying is a good practice is much more than exercises, it's effective studies that you choose that take you closer to what YOU love in the music.
You'll get so much more than just learning scales if you can hear a scale being used in a phrase that swings... so you bring that sense to everything you practice and you choose your material carefully so it informs a feeling you can use when you're playing.
Ask the question. Feel the void in your perception. Find practice materials that seem like they will help you get there. Never lose your focus on the musician you believe you can be.
I have see way too many students who've learned exercises and routines that they never connected with a feeling. It comes from constant awareness of your own need to know.
Just my 2 cents.
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Sure I think this is absolutely true. But I think it’s also quite common to hear students who have a lot of aspiration without the foundation to be able to interpret what they’re hearing. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Part of listening and understanding what’s going on is passion and repetition and stuff. Part of it is having been familiar with enough of the tools to go “oh that bit was a scale — wait hold up something there wasn’t right.”
So definitely agree with you. Scales are grammar. Doesn’t mean you have something to say, but if you do have something to say, you need the grammar to express it well.
Or most of us do anyway. Some of us are Faulkner I suppose.
EDIT: yes, of course Faulkner knew his grammar very well. He just declined to observe its rules.
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Higher achievement contexts might be a better approach. The thing with scales, arpeggios, (and chords) in Jazz is that they must be worked within the contexts of tunes, lots of tunes. Everything you need to learn how to do is in the tunes you want to be able to play. Why not gauge your tracking with regard to tunes as the contexts for all development? Originally Posted by chris32895
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OK, so I managed to put a little something together for practice ideas. For some context, I know jazz and can play on some tunes. However, I don't consider myself very proficient but I do have a college education in music and know my theory pretty well. I also would say I'm a fairly experienced player so I am not starting from scratch. However, it is helpful if one simply assumes I am a beginner at jazz just so I don't miss anything.
Simple practice routine (everything with a metronome or a backing track)
Mechanical (these are things to do daily simply to keep my hands in shape)
- 1234 - slow & fast (start at first position and play frets 1, 2, 3, 4 on each string. Move up a fret and repeat until around the 12th position. Do slowly and then pretty much as fast as possible while being consistently smooth. Idea is to build up speed over time with alternate picking)
- String skip - slow & fast (similar to 1234, but for string skipping. A bit hard to explain but the idea is the same)
Scales/Arpeggios (basic scales, all positions - pick a scale and a position or two for the day (start in Major, then work through minor). Log scale, approach, and BPM and work through all keys)
- Scale, straight, ascending/descending
- Scale, alternating 3rds, ascending/descending
- Scale, in triads, ascending/descending
- Scale, in 7th chord shapes, ascending/descending
- Some kind of mix of the above, ex: play scale straight ascending, in triads down...
Standards (apply above approach to changes in a tune)
- Learn tune head
- Learn changes - shell voicings
- Apply scale practice to tune - play simple arpeggios over each chord
- Improvise on the tune 1,000,000 times
- ? (this is probably where it's good to have a teacher)
Other
- Book study/reading
- Transcriptions (Bach, Solos)
The hard part at this point I suppose would be tracking everything and figuring out which days to do exactly what due to time constraints. That's life I guess. Any ideas on this routine are welcome but I'd like to keep it very basic as I need a good foundation. I'm trying to treat this as something similar to a gym routine and need the routine to be simple and reliable. I'm sure at some point in the future, as I become more proficient, practice and playing on tunes will reveal to me more things to work on.
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In a way, what you put together is similar to what I do. For me it is a weekly cycle; early in the week I'm working on things I just discovered while on stage. I want to examine them before they fade. The middle of the week I play very deliberately, technically, exploring fingering solutions, phrasing, and articulation of the new things I want to develop. The end of the week before the weekend I work through the set list testing applications of the new things within the tunes. After the weekend I do it all again starting with the next batch of new things just discovered.
You can always be practicing awareness and control of musical intensity.
- going up in pitch is exciting
- going down in pitch is relaxing
- moving in scale tone intervals is exciting, greater intervals more so
- moving in diatonic steps is relaxing, chromatic more so
Popular "arpeggio up scale down" structures are so expressive because of this.
Combinations may be explored to make technical practicing more enlightening.
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I would skip the 1234 stuff and focus on playing the scales deliberately and cleanly. Unless your fingering is REALLY sloppy
I never did those.
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If you are going to do something like this, it pays to be both creative and thorough or you'll quickly get bored and find all your chromatic lines follow the same pattern. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Here's something I came up with back in the day to aid dexterity and ensure musical variety:
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(long post)
This is just my experience, so take the following with a some salt; do disregard any/all of it if this doesn't make sense to you.
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I generally try to steer clear of scalar/arpeggiated routines because of what I tend to do with them (and I can't help myself no matter how hard I try).
Back then, I'd come up with many of these 'The List To End All Lists' in terms of covering technique, picking, picking direction, scales, arpeggios, etc. Each time I created a list, it would be the most exhaustive thing ever, and I'd feel good about it, like I've just solved a great mystery of life with a never-before framework of practice. The last ever perfect list I created for myself was something similar to what Allan is doing (the Barry Harris stuff that Chris Parks says you have to do: thirds, triads, chords, add half-steps, dominant half-step rules, etc.)
But I never followed through with any of those lists for long. Maybe it's a discipline issue or I simply lack the grit to just stick to it. It's definitely this voice inside that keeps saying, "I've already figured out this perfect list, but it's a bit of work. Don't wanna do it now. It's ok, I can come back anytime to this list and do it. Just chill for now. I've got this. It's already perfect, it's already perfect. Just remember to return to it." And I never do. I let the complacency of having a perfect list be my perfect panacea to all my musical woes. It became my perfect opiate so much so that inaction was always the final result.
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I'm not saying I'm wiser than anyone here, but personally for me, the thing that kept my hands in great shape was the thing I happened to enjoy the most - learning tunes. They teach me so many musical and technical things.
Musical:
- what the best notes of a scale/arpeggio are
- how to sequence these notes
- which tunes have a similar contour
Technical things:
- how tunes are organised in CAGED shapes
- which tunes have a similar organisation and fingering
In my 2 years of playing, I have probably learnt about 70+ tunes. I can play almost all of them (except for bop heads) in all 12 keys. The way I remember melodies is categorising them. Each category has a logic to it (I won't elaborate unless you'd like me to.)
Here's a category of melodies that, to me, have the same organisation on the fretboard.
After You’ve Gone
Bye Bye Blackbird
Flying Home
Have You Met Miss Jones
If I Had You
Indian Summer
Lover Man Oh Where Can You Be
Poor Butterfly
Rose Room
The Days of Wine and Roses
Off and on, I would practise just this one category of tunes consecutively in one key, on one string set (say DGBE set). This my 'routine' when I feel like practising.
Doing this kept not only my hands in shape, but also my ears, my interval sense, and my 'mind's eye of the fretboard' got a great workout too. I can't even begin to describe the amount of musical/technical progress I made as beginner because it's so profound.
The category I listed above is only one of six categories I have. The more tunes I learn, the more categorising there is, the longer each category gets. And the fretboard opens up more and more each time. (A funny thing also happens: the more tunes I learn, the faster I learn new tunes.)
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I know scales/arpeggios part of music is important to you, but don't forget to allow the music part of music to teach you too. For me the best part is that it's a lot more fun than drills and routines and I remember these things better because they are actually really musical.Last edited by brent.h; 01-16-2026 at 03:41 AM.
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Personally, I think that more Comping exercises are needed. By every Jazz guitar player.
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Just out of curiosity, Brent, how do you usually go about learning a tune? How many of those that you have learnt you've got from the sheet music and how many transcribed?
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Ok here's my process.
1. Go to Sheet Music Singer's YouTube channel. This guy sings the plain, original written melodies of tunes. Today, I wanted to learn Avalon, so I searched for the tune there.
2. I play the video multiple times without looking at the screen and score. I sing the tune first until I get it.
3. Then, I sing the tune at a ridiculously slow pace. I learn to hear the movement of each note and the interval. Let's take for example the first four notes in the tune Avalon.
- I can hear in the first bar that it's a V7 chord playing.
- I hear the first note. This is the root of V7. If this was in the key of C, this note would be G.
- I hear the second note. Ah, it's a perfect 5th above the first note. It's definitely a D.
- Third note, sounds like it's a major 2nd interval above the previous note. Should be an E.
- Fourth note, it's a minor 2nd interval above the E. So must be an F.
- Ok review this bit. G, D, E, then F. Oh look it spells a kind-of G7 without a third.
So I keep going for the entire tune.
4. As I'm figuring out the intervals, I close my eyes, hold up my left hand, and imagine playing an air guitar. Each time a sing a note, press down a finger on my imaginary fretboard, and work through the melody and figure out my fingers need to go to next. Sometimes, I will run into some problems. Like oh this melody note can't be played on this string so I have to imagine a different fingering or different CAGED shape/position.
At this stage, I'm still doing everything mentally without help from my screen or my guitar. It's just pure sound and pure visualisation. I do all this because I want to, but also because I have a handicap: I can't read music well! I hope you can understand why I need Sheet Music Singer's audio. It's crucial for my learning.
5. Once I'm done getting the intervals and fingering internalised, I categorise the tune into one of my six categories. Each category has a unique layout on the fretboard. How do I categorise them? Well it's based on what the lowest note and highest note of the melody are, and based on CAGED shapes. Quite a complicated system I have which is hard to explain in words. Need a video to explain this. But long story short: each category allows me to play the tune on string set DGBE and on string set ADGB. This allows me to play in all 12 keys.
6. I go back to the recording to get the chords by ear. I write the original changes out in my Word document. Copy and paste the lyrics and composer's name in, too. Then I check the Real Book key, then I transpose the song chord by chord into the modern key since everyone plays from it. I almost never use Real Book changes because I don't like how they simplify and two-five everything to death.
7. Try the melody out on guitar. Play it a few times in the original key, then a few times in the Real Book key.
8. Go back to Sheet Music Singer. Finally, here, I look at the score to check if I got the notes right.
9. After that I'd spend many more hours playing the melody straight. Playing the plain chords in Freddie Green style.
10. Take a break. Come back, sing the tune with the lyrics for fun.
But yeah that's about it. Quite a long process.Last edited by brent.h; 01-16-2026 at 11:23 AM.
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