WAS, sure you can use a drum track instead of a metronome if that helps you and Mac's suggestions are of course right on like he always is.

My take is a bit blunter and simpler. There are certain boring prerequisites that are necessary for any serious field of human endeavor. In music scales are certainly one of those. My advice is just suck it up and start practicing.

There's basically two things you get from learning scales, finger dexterity and the scales themselves particularly the scale tone numbers such as an A is the 6th of C, the 4th of D, the flatted 5th of Eb, etc. Everything starts with scales in music. Later on you may ask how do I play or solo over Gmaj7-F#7-Em-A7-Dmaj7 changes and the answer could be just mess around with a D major scale starting on the third or fifth. Those chords are from the solo section of Spain and a D scale is a good starting point. You know what that is right? If not where have you been buddy?? You never learned basic scales??? That is what any player would be thinking if you didn't understand that answer. A basic major scale is only the beginning, there are minor, pentatonic, diminished, modal and many others.

Just an aside after 40 years of playing, I never really studied pentatonics and I'm doing that right now. Of course I've recognized that I've been doing a lot of pentatonics just by ear anyway but it's good to really have the proper grounding with them and to practice the correct fingering. I had not done that before, I've just faked it. The great thing about music is there's always something new to learn and I intend to keep doing that until I'm in the home and can't play any more.

To help a bit, there are lots of youtube vids of good players showing how these scales fit in certain songs and while that still means you have to sit and practice them at least you've heard how they work once you've learned them. Basically those vids give you faith that you're not wasting your time even if it is boring at first.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.