SL, thanks for sharing. Your post got me thinking about different ways to get comfortable with the scales. I already knew the 5 positions that GT has on the scale finder plus the blues scale and a couple others as well, and I was pretty comfortable linking the scales together along the fretboard. The next step was to get good at finding these positions in all keys anywhere on the fretboard quickly. So one thing I've been doing lately is to concentrate on one area of the fretboard at a time and go through the scales in all the keys while remaining in that same general area. For example, decide that you are only going to play at or near the 12th fret. Then go through all keys A-G in that same general area. It forces you to 1) know all the basic scale patterns 2) memorize where the root of each scale is located 3) while also testing your fretboard note knowledge. To take it a more interesting step further I plug my MP3 into the amp and shuffle through my songs, playing a lead over each song, while only in the 12th fret. Then I'll move on to another area of the fretboard. By doing this I am also getting better at honing in on the key of the song fairly quickly. The only thing I'm not sure of at this point is whether the key is in the major or minor version the scale shapes that I am playing (for example: A minor or C Major, D minor or F Major, etc). Any help there would be appreciated.

Todd