If you've ever worked on developing speed on guitar you've probably heard references to "muscle memory". But what is this mysterious facility? Is it something real or just a part of musicians' folklore? Can we do anything to make our learning more efficient, or should we be suspicious of "automatic" playing as less creative?

I "discovered" a scale about a month ago when playing with the Ionian b2 (which is now, by the way, part of my regular improvising vocabulary). At the time I thought it was just a curiosity but I liked the sound and since then I've seen it pop up in a few other places.

There's a brand new entry in my series of free eBooks: Spectral Analysis of Scales. This one's a bit more technical than the others, but I think it'll be of interest to advanced musicians looking for a way to expand their vocabulary of scale and arpeggio ideas a little more easily. It's completely free, so download it and spread the word. This is the first edition, so as always please send me any errors you find!

Perhaps you've already learned the good old-fashioned "Pentatonic scale" (major or minor versions, it doesn't matter). Perhaps you know you can learn some of "the modes" (of the Major Scale) by adding two extra notes to one of the modes of this scale. If so, you know how quick and easy that is. Which other seven-note scales can we learn by adding two notes to the Common Pentatonic?

This interesting but little-known scale cropped up in the context of some exotic scale work this week. It's easy to learn, has an unusual but very usable sound and can help with learning several larger scale structures.

In my own playing I've decided it's time to focus on technique again, which I haven't really given much attention to in the last 12 months. Here's my plan for the next year.

I just watched a Tom Quayle video on this topic that contains some good information but needed some translation before it made sense to me. I thought I'd provide the translation for anyone else who found it useful.

Two quick bits of news. I'm now a moderator over at /r/guitarlessons, the part of reddit dedicated to learning guitar. I've also decided to set up a Bandcamp account for future solo electronic releases.

This is a quick note on two superimposition strategies that are quite common in jazz, and that enable you to use your triad and seventh arpeggios to create more sophisticated sounds without having to memorize anything new.

So it's a week since my last post on the subject and two since I started working on this scale with some seriousness. The patterns and sounds are becoming quite familiar now and my main job this week was to find modal applications over different chord qualities. This is an important step in integrating a new sound into your real-world playing rather than just noodling over drones or vamps.