Playing What You Hear
Another important aspect of understanding the scale forms is being able to play what you hear in your mind, and to play the same thing in many different places on the fretboard. Once you can play whatever you hear in any of the five forms, the need to move to somewhere "more comfortable" is eliminated and you can improvise much more freely.
A good way to develop this ability is to play a simple melody you already know from memory (e.g. Yankee Doodle) in any of the forms, and then move it to all other possible fingerings on the fretboard. You can often play the same melody twice in different octaves within the one form. Once you can easily play a melody anywhere on the fretboard, choose another one and repeat the process, then another, etc Make it part of your daily practice. As you progress, you will be able to do this with more sophisticated lines, but start with simple ones.
This example uses a two bar phrase played in all five forms in the key of C major.
Here is a solo which moves freely between all the forms of the C major scale. Once you have learned it, use the ideas to create your own lines and practice improvising with the C Major/A minor Ballad Jam-Along track on the CD (page 204, CD2 Track 59).
