Huh? Two Scales at Once? (Guitar Lesson)

Huh? Two Scales at Once?

Put mental multitasking to work with your hands. Practice playing a simple C major scale, but play it in a round. Start it, and then while continuing to play it in sequence, start it again!

Taught by Bumblefoot in Bumblefoot's Artist Series seriesLength: 4:07Difficulty: 3.5 of 5

Scene 1

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Now let' take some of that mental multitask stuff and we'll start getting a little more musical with it.

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I'm going to start off very simple and it's going to grow from there.

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What you're going to do is you are going to pick every note and we're going to play the first five notes of an open C scale

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using your second and third fingers.

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It's going to go like this.

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It's just the start of it.

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Very easy, yeah.

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Now we're going to pluck using our first and fourth fingers on the second and first strings the next octave.

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Easy.

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Now don't look you're going to play both parts together.

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You're going to be picking this, you're going to be plucking this.

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Don't look at your hands and just try and do something else while this is going on.

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Don't look, try not to think about it.

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Just have a conversation, hey how are you doing?

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Just think about other things and try and make it just go on in the background where you're not forcing it,

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where you're not trying to control it.

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You're just letting it happen and that's what makes things become natural.

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Just let it happen and don't try.

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So we've got this going on and we'll finish that up.

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Ok, still easy.

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Now we're going to start one before the other one by one note and we're going to start shifting them.

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So what we have going on here now is that we have these two scales going that one started at a different time than the other.

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Still not looking, I'm just having a conversation with you but in the back I have this thing going on.

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Like that.

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Again, let's just even take it to two more notes and just have it go so now it's circling around and you still have it doing that.

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Not looking, not thinking about it, it's just there.

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Very nice.

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Good and you can keep on going with that and go through all you know, you can just keep on going and it just keeps on going.

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So this kind of stuff, mental multitasking when you're just doing two different things that don't necessarily coincide

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and go exactly with each other and they oppose each other at certain times.

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When you can get it to where your brain is sort of doing each one separately

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and they're not fighting each other, the two parts that's when you can really open up and start doing a lot musically.

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You can start having one hand doing one thing and the other hand and just make it up as you go along.

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Let's try another variation of this whole thing where we'll take a scale and maybe every three notes we'll throw in a chord or something like that.

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A different chord every time.

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Things like that.

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This is just a very simple, basic, musical exercise that works on separating your mind and your hands and everything.

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So have fun with it.

Bumblefoot's Artist Series

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About Bumblefoot View Full Biography "Making music has a greater purpose - anything I can do to help others, I try to do."

-Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal

I love spicy food - working on recipes for my own line of hot sauces. Been upping my tolerance - currently at 7,100,000 Scoville Units (that's 3x stronger than commercial-grade pepper spray weapon) If anyone asks me about Scoville Units, I'll bore them for a half-hour talking about capsaicin molecules, habaneros and heat measurements.

One time in Japan, I stayed up 43 hours straight doing gigs, interviews, instructional videos and going to clubs.

I take oral hygiene and fire safety seriously.

As a kid, I'd lay the guitar on the ground and play Bach pieces with two hands and one foot. Been a while since I tried that.

When I can, I like to do home improvement stuff - mostly drywall and electrical, some simple plumbing. Last thing I did at my house was install recessed lights in the ceiling going to a dimmer, and put in a new bathroom sink and faucet.