When to move on from the Basic Major and Minor Scale Boxes.

Hi!

I have been working on the Major and Minor Scale boxes for a few months, naming the root notes as I go. I've been exclusively on the Low E and A strings. I've got it down pat. I'm studying the Blues course right now, and I'm able to identify the positions of a scale in relation to Blues chords (I, IV, and V). Should I move on and continue the music theory course now? I don't want to get ahead of myself, because I'm learning very well since I started, and I'm having a blast with the lessons on the website. Attached below is my current progress with the music theory course. Thanks for your time and help!

Hey, Kyle.  Congrats on your progress so far.  The general principle is to make sure your knowledge (theory) and playing skills (practice) keep growing at the same pace.  Otherwise you wind up learning ideas you can't or don't use or else you're playing things but don't understand them.

The good news is that the courses generally have the right amount of theory baked into the practical examples.  If you keep working through the blues course, you'll gradually get the theory you need along with the playing skills.

Regarding moving forward with theory in your specific case, that depends on your goals and time.  If you have the time to pursue both, then it's great to work on both paths in parallel.  If you are trying to maximize your time then I'd focus on the blues course.  You'll learn musical examples to play and then later you can return to the theory tutorials to flesh out your understanding of what makes those musical examples tick theoretically.

For example in the blues course you'll learn how to play dominant 7th chords.   After you get them down you can look at the theory tutorial on chord theory to understand more of the concepts of those chords and how they fit into music in general.  Same for scales.  The beginner scales are a great way to start to understand the basic sounds in music and build the skills to play single note melodies, riffs, licks, lines.  And then in the blues course you'll some specific lines in that style.  You can return to the theory tutorials to learn the ideas specifically behind the pentatonic scales and why they are widely used in blues.

Hope that helps.  Keep practicing!

Cool, man! Thanks for the update, Chris! I have this 40-minute exercise I made that I do before I play the blues, focusing on my right-hand execution, and I have been using the scale boxes I learned from your videos to create some syncopated rhythms. My end goal is to become a metal musician of my own, and those basic major/minor boxes are helping me a ton!

One of the exercises I made for myself, I'll chug quarter beats for a bar and then gallop the second bar with a quarter note on the second and fourth part of the measure using the C Major scale all the way down the A string starting on A, fret 3 (C) to fret 14 (B) and back down. I learned that scale from one of your videos. 

I noted the blues course is dabbling in music theory a bit, and that is why I asked. Maybe I'll pick a day to study a music theory lesson once a week as I progress in my journey. Thanks for the reply! I'm looking forward to your videos for a higher skillset guitarist in the future!

You're welcome.  That sounds like a fun exercise.  If you are aiming for a metal sound, then a minor scale will also work.  And it sounds like you have a good plan that works for you.  Best of success!