Quote:
Originally Posted by gitnoob
Exactly. And how many of us still practice our ABC's on a daily basis?
Once you learn them, it's time to move on. Same with scales. But my impression is that even those with scale knowledge still practice them as a daily exercise.
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I would agree with you 100% if I thought for a second that anybody knew scales as well and thoroughly as they do the alphabet, but what do you mean by "learn" them? If you can say instantly without thinking about it what notes are in an Ab major scale or a B harmonic minor, or F mixolydian and run through all of their iterations on the fretboard without having to think about it, then I'd say yeah you're probably good to go.
A lot of people, myself certainly included, basically learn scales by rote, without context and just play them in patterns. I'd say that there's generally more to "learning" a scale than that. Can you stop on command in the middle of a scale and know what note you're on, what scale step or are you just playing the pattern? Does it matter? Well, you can get a parrot to mimic the English language, does that mean that it knows what it's saying? If music is a language that means you're saying something, do you want to know what you're saying, or do you want to be a parrot?
Yes, it's about learning the fretboard, and fingering exercises, and warming up. And yes there's probably a point at which you can stop practicing a straight up open position G major scale, but a lot of it depends on what you want out of your playing experience.
Certainly you can learn 8-10 chords and strum along with the Beatles or Neil Young or Coldplay and never learn a scale, but it would be pretty hard to really call yourself a guitar player, let alone a musician.
However, if you want to understand the structure of the music that you're playing, why it's constructed the way it is, understand the subtitles involved without leaving them to chance, then scales become important. If you want to improvise well, and consistently, it's important to know how things go together, and why they work.