Who Wins In A Fight: SCALES vs LICKS

One of my students inside Essential CAGED Guitar System had a great question about which was more important when learning soloing.

I thought I’d share my answer here. The timeless debate scales vs licks.

They asked:

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it's more important to develop your lead solos over the pentatonic shapes and chord tones than it is memorizing a lot of riffs. Right?

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It’s kinda like saying what's more important the car or the wheels.

Scales are a lot like the box frame of a car. While licks are like the wheels.

If you just have the boxframe of a car without wheels. Going anywhere is pretty tough. What happens to players who focus only on a bunch of scale work is. Their solos end up sounding boring and lacking melody.

On the other hand, if you just have wheels (licks). Sure, you could hop on a single wheel like a unicycle and ride around a bit. But you might find yourself limited on the fretboard and lacking substance. You won’t understand how the notes work or the theory behind them.

So the quick answer is you need both.

That’s why when I teach fretboard mastery and soloing, I show you how to connect these ideas, and solo in every position on the fretboard.

Once you put them together. Now you’re cruising!

This essentially gets you the full car and the wheels.

By the way, you know what happened when I got my first car?

I went out on a few dates.

Well…playing some ripping solos just might land you some of those too.

If you need help with this grab my free fretboard guide below:

Jon MacLennan