| This was one of those lessons that seemed to cover stuff I already knew well, and perhaps am even pretty good at -- but that then taught me something important by exposing a weakness I didn't realize I had.
I was already hip to the three different fingering patterns for the major scale, use them all comfortably (though I certainly need to work more on the one I find more difficult than the others), and understand why it/they are important. Check. I already spend a lot of my practice time noodling around with scales in different positions, experimenting with little melodies and groove snippets. Check. So when I got to the part about connecting the different fingerings -- say, going up one way and down another -- I figured it would be a piece of cake. I already know them all, so how hard could this be?
Well, I found out on my very first attempt. I started with my middle finger on C at the 3rd fret of the A string, went up the scale to the octave on the 5th fret of the G string, and.... discovered that I was stuck. I realized immediately what the problem was: I knew all three fingerings well going up, but only knew one of them well going down. And in this case, the only way I knew back down was the one I had just gone up -- thus my embarrassing state of stuckageness. And then it occurred to me that what I've always done when I wanted to go down a major scale has been to shift in such a way as to get my pinky on the root, so I could go down the one way I was comfortable with.
I guess I know what I'll be working on this week....
Thanks again, Scott! | 
