Electric Guitar Lessons: Whole Tone Mania

The exercises in this article use a relatively exotic scale: the whole tone scale. It is perfect for adding an "outside" flavor to your solos and improvisations without going too far outside. The whole tone scale was one of Frank Zappa's personal favorites; he would employ it regularly during solos to tweak a few ear drums.

The whole tone scale simply involves starting on a root note and traveling up in pitch by whole steps (two frets on the guitar) at a time. Here is the whole tone scale in the key of A:

Low E string: {-5-7-9-} A string: {-6-8-} D string: {-5-7-9-} G string: {-6-8-} B string: {-6-8-} high E string: {-5-7-9-}

Our first exercise with the whole tone scale will be a simple one that uses open strings with hammer-ons and pull-offs:

High E string: {-12-14-12-0-10-12-10-0-8-10-8-0-6-8-6-0-} continue on high E: {-4-6-4-0-2-4-2-0--}

Although it isn't notated, I only pick the first of each four note grouping above. That is, every time I shift hand positions downward, I pick only that note and then hammer and pull the rest. I didn't include that information in the tablature since it would have made things a tad too messy. You can pick the first note and hammer and pull the others as suggested, or you can come up with your own picking combinations, whatever suits you best.

How can you use the exercise above in a real solo? Say you are soloing in E Aeolian in the 12th position. The whole tone exercise above is perfect for descending to the open position to resume soloing in E Aeolian, which would provide an "outside" sound during the descent to provoke a few ear canals in the audience.

Our last exercise will be a finger-tapping lick. Using the whole tone scale with tapping means you can get some spectacular stretches and really work the muscles of your hand, so that after some rest your digits will be significantly stronger.

Here is our whole tone finger tapping exercise:

High E string: {-20(t)-18-16-14-12---20(t)-18-16-14-12-} continue on high E: {-20(t)-18-16-14-12---20(t)-18-16-14-12-20(t)--}

Notice the t's beside the notes that are to be tapped. You can think of this tapping lick as being in the key of E major with a couple of passing tones. Notice that the notes above are grouped into sets of five, and that the first note is tapped while the rest are pulled. Use all four of your fingers to fret the non-tapped notes, which will be quite challenging. To me, this lick sounds like something the virtuoso jazz fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth would play.

A performance suggestion would be that if you are doing some tapping licks in E minor pentatonic, you could switch to the E whole tone tapping lick above to go "outside" for a moment, then transition back into some phrases in E minor - whether the ending lick is picked or tapped is up to you.

The last exercise above will really tax the fingers and build a lot of strength in your digits. Make sure you warm up your hands for at least half an hour before attempting it. Then start off slowly with a metronome and gradually build speed.

And that's it for whole tone scale exercises. The whole tone scale is a nice, slightly outside-sounding scale. Have fun incorporating it into more of your solos and improvisations.