The scale I'm focusing on first is the Superaugmented natural 3. I'd got the CAGED shapes down, meaning I could find the notes of the scale relative to the underlying augmented arpeggio. This week's task was to join these up and be able to play the scale freely all over the fingerboard in any key.

I've spent a little of my practice time over the last two weeks looking at the Ionian b2 scale and some of its modes. I thought it might be useful to post something here about the approach I've taken so far and how I aim to continue the learning process this week.

Six months and more than 6,000 downloads later, I've just released a new edition of Scale and Arpeggio Resources. As well as fixing a few errata I've been collecting since the first one came out I've also added a substantial number of octatonic scales. The link is the same as the previous edition; grab your copy today!

I've been experimenting with hypermodes for a while now and thought I'd share both the theory and a practical application here.

Just now I'm slightly obsessed with the amount we can learn from sportspeople about practice and this article struck me as interesting. Replace "competition" with "gig" and you're most of the way there.

A very common question from students is how we can tell which chords as "in key with" a particular scale. This came up today on /r/guitarlessons so I thought it might be worth a quick post.

Fill your boots -- my 400-page Slonimsky book for guitarists is now available as a free download. The scale book has had over 4000 downloads in just a few months, but I suspect this one will be a little more narrow in its appeal...

Ornette Coleman is revered as an important and prolific composer, perhaps the only one from the free jazz tradition who's so widely-acknowledged in this field. So why aren't there big books of the hundreds of tunes he's written over the decades? Who knows, but I did manage to find some transcriptions on the web and thought I'd collect them here as a service to the next person who goes hunting for them.

I've been practicing quartal voicings today and ended up knocking together a little tool to help me do so. It's a kind of "modal metronome" and I thought it might be worth sharing here.

Most guitar students do fine until they hit one particular topic that culls them like a dose of plague hitting a too-large population of water buffalo: modes. The word alone is enough to strike fear (or guilt) into the hearts of many players, even some who've been playing a long while.