I've followed the discussion around the rights and wrongs of practising scales on another topic and I'm convinced by George et al that it might be a "good thing".
I've been learning to play D/G for a few years, in a spasmodic "stop start" way and generally just find a new tune, bash away at it until my finger muscles remember roughly where to go next and then move on to another, hoping that by regularly playing previous tunes I can keep them all in my fingers. It's a bit like keeping an increasing number of plates spinning. I'm hoping that the quality of playing just organically improves the more and more I play and the more new and varied tunes I learn.
I think some "pre-training" in the form of scales/runs/arpeggios might be a good idea. A 2 octave scale in the home key is a start - although I'm puzzled about the fingering for doing the full 2 octaves (where do you change position, at the end of the 1st octave, moving whole hand up to fit the 2nd octave, or more progressively every few notes?)
I know there are other keys that can be played on a D/G (I have a copy of JK's videos and remember his description of all the various modes/minors, but now I can't play the video due to lack of suitable hardware! Perhaps I should buy the DVD edition?)
So far I've come up with :-
G Row = Gmaj, Amin (dorian), Emin (aeolian), Dmaj (myxolidian)
D Row = Dmaj, Emin (dorian), Bmin (aeolian), Amaj (myxolidian)
I guess there are other scales that can be played that involve a bit of cross rowing to pick the odd note from the other row where necessary.
At the risk of upsetting the "no scales here" folk, for the benefit of us struggling few who see the value of scales, can someone help with a set of scales (with fingering if possible :)) etc, with the intention of improving muscle memory and speed/strength.
Cheers,
John