[Jay42]

When people say a guitarist is playing an "exotic scale", sometimes I think the guitarist was simply playing something more commonplace, but happened to hit a few notes "outside of the box".

Do any of you purposefully learn an exotic scale and build a song or solo around it?

I still wonder if that was Bob Hartman's intention when he played 'Angel of Light' with Petra. It's only over 10 years after hearing my first Petra song that I realize how brilliant of a player Hartman was. He wasn't a shredder, so at the time he was outshadowed by Yngwie and shredding peers. But Bob did some incredibly catchy stuff, and I think the playing throughout Angel of Light is one of his key moments. He takes the minor pentatonic scale but really hits these special phrases that I can't describe in any other word but exotic.

Well, maybe another word that it almost reaches is erotic. It's just that darned good.

[pillar]

Absolutely, I love working the neck with the pentatonic scale and when doing it most definitly break out of the box. Many say that playing that limits you to playing one box area between a couple of frets. Those players only learn the box pattern and do not learn to apply it using the entire neck. Also, when I refer to the entire neck, I don't merely mean playing in the key of song within a couple of frets, I mean that you can actually use the entire neck within one song, depending on what your playing.

But not just playing the notes, but learning and applying half-step, whole-step, grace-not, slight, pre, bend and release bends; vibrato, wide vibrato, hamer-ons, pull-off's, legato and shift slides, trill, tapping, natural and pinch harmonic, pick scraping, muffled strings, palm muting, raking, trem picking, vibrato bar dive and return, vibrato bar scoop, vibrato bar dip. Learn and entire scale inside and out, learn and apply techniques, practice, and before you now it you have your style that you apply when you jam with someone. I love it.

[emo_boy]

That is exactly what I'm working on in my lessons right now. Learning the A Aolean scale like the inside of my eyelids up and down the neck, breaking out of the box pattern. That was a problem of mine for a while and still is a bit. I tend to play in one or two positions when I'm just jamming. but I can notice a huge improvement in my sound in just a few weeks of conciously making myself see the scale over the whole neck.

[gchord]

Normally,I play a arthritic blues style,in which I throw in some bends and occasioinly tapping thrown. People tell my style is a blend of George Harrison and Eric Clapton. I can't hear it,so I just smile. I always think the best solo is the one you can hum note for note.