Top Tips For Guitar Scale Success

Learn Each New Scale Until Mastery.
The key to using guitar scales to their full potential is to learn each one to mastery.
If you don't know a scale well enough your mind will need to think consciously about what you are doing while you are playing. It is important to learn each scale to the level of unconscious competence if you want to play fluidly and creatively.

Learn Guitar Scales Using a Metronome
Timing is one of the fundamentals of being a great guitarist.
You are always advised to play a new song or solo slowly at first then increase your speed. When you do this you can sometimes lose your sense for the timing and feel of the song. The trick here is to use a metronome to program your brain with the proper structure of the solos or song while playing at the slow speed.

Don't Give Up Too Soon
Guitar scales get easier the more you practice.
It might take you several weeks to learn your first guitar scale but with each new scale the learning period will get shorter and shorter.

Listen Out For Common Note Combinations
Listen to your favourite songs and take note of common riffs and licks popping up again and again.
Music is about repetition and the larger the library of scales and riffs you have programmed into your head, the easier it will be to improvise great solos.

Relax
A key to being a great guitar player is to simply relax.
So many guitarists are full of tension as they play and this has an adverse effect on their ability

Memorize Your Favourite Solos and Licks
The trick is not only to memorize and learn your favourite solos and licks but to improvise and modify them.
When you do this you get a great sense of a songs 'flow' and it's an interesting way to learn the subtleties of a guitarist's style.