Solving fretboard mysteries for the deductive learner

[MIGAS79]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

I strongly agree that knowing how we each learn is a true asset that guides our path and progress. I have been saying that, more or less, in all my posts in this thread.

You might be interested in this:

http://www.musicfortheblind.com/guitar-courses/

Tony

Tony, thanks for taking the time to share this. I’m going to absolutely check it out!

[rickcrna]

Wow! My initial inquiry has certainly opened up a lot of possibilities for learning the fretboard that I hadn't even considered. I REALLY appreciate all the brain power in this thread and all of the suggestions and shared experiences.

As was mentioned earlier....it will take some time for me to sift through all of this and "chew on the carpet" for awhile.

With retirement not far off, learning the fretboard and expanding my skill level is very high on my "to do" list!

Rick

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by rickcrna

Wow! My initial inquiry has certainly opened up a lot of possibilities for learning the fretboard that I hadn't even considered. I REALLY appreciate all the brain power in this thread and all of the suggestions and shared experiences.

As was mentioned earlier....it will take some time for me to sift through all of this and "chew on the carpet" for awhile.

With retirement not far off, learning the fretboard and expanding my skill level is very high on my "to do" list!

Rick

Congrats on your upcoming retirement! I think music, especially the guitar as a solo instrument, is a great retirement hobby. It can be as expensive or cheap as you want. Once you buy your instrument, you can choose to spend the rest of your attention on learning with all the free materials and support around the internet. YouTube is also a great resource. You could spend the rest of your life learning new things on the guitar.

Tony

[MC5C]

A friend of mine based part of her Master's degree in Music on ways and means to learn the guitar fretboard. I participated in her study. At the end of the day, none of the methods worked particularly better or worse than any other method. The only true basis for improvement was time on the instrument doing things that made you think about what the notes are. I favor sight reading simple tunes - just about any head-sheet in the Real Book. Open randomly, find a tune that you don't really know but you can play single note style, and play it. Don't memorize it, just read it and play it. Start in open position, then play it in third position (great for tunes in F and Bb), then in fifth position (G and C fall here naturally). Mostly you can play it as written in open, and transpose up the octave for the higher positions, or stay down the octave and play on the bottom strings (which I find the hardest). The key is to play music, read music, and think about the notes first, and the patterns as a secondary element.

This is really similar to how most other instruments learn where their notes are - just reading material and playing. Note I don't mention chords. Chords are made up of notes, so learn the notes first, worry about chords in a different way.

[devellis]

If you haven't yet looked at Tony's excellent paper, you should. It has a wealth of information laid out in a logical way.

My personal approach is sort of a baby-version of CAGED. I use partial chords that typically involve the first four strings as a starting place. I base my chord choices on a few simple first-position chords that can easily be made movable to higher neck positions.

The first of these is the D-chord shape. If you barre the first three strings with your index finger; use your middle finger on the second string, third fret; and add your ring finger to the fourth string fourth fret, this is a nice easy movable chord shape.

The second easy one is what's called the "long A" in blues circles. It involves barring four strings at the second fret with the index finger and using the pinky to fret the first string at the fifth fret. It's a bit of a stretch at first but is actually easier to play the higher up the neck you go.

The third one is the F-chord shape, using the index finger to bar the first two strings at the first fret, the middle finger to fret the third string at the second fret, and the ring finger to fret the fourth string at the third fret. Leave the pinky free to grab individual notes as needed.

One more useful chord is the C7. But wait, a C7 shape isn't moveable because the 1st string is open. Well, you can fix that. Usually, a C7 played in 1st position is a regular C shape with the pinky added to the third string, third fret (thus adding the "7"). Well, you can move the pinky to the third fret of the first string and then shift the ring finger over to where the pinky had been, on the fourth string, third fret. This still has all the notes for a C7 chord if you play only the top four strings. And every string is now fretted, so you can move the shape up and down the neck.

If you learn those fairly simple shapes, you can start playing some stuff you already know in different neck positions. If you need a 7th chord but the C7 shape doesn't seem to work anywhere on the neck to get the sound you want, try figuring out a movable chord based on the first position D7 shape. If you have to, just play it on 3 strings. If you need a minor, you probably already know how to play F minor (essentially the F shape with your middle finger lifted off of the third string). So find the place where that shape will be the minor chord you need.

If you do this a bit, you'll start to problem solve. You'll learn that within a basic shape, you can make alterations. In the long A, you can lift the pinkie off and instead, put your ring finger on the first string one fret above the barre. That's the A7 shape. You can also slide that ring finger up one more fret and it becomes the A major 7 shape. Or you can not use any finger but the index barre on the first string and it becomes the A6 shape. You may not even care about what chord you're playing but discover that where you fret the first string from within the Long-A shape gives you different melody notes. You can cross the pinky over to the second string and find additional melody notes. Just experiment and you'll be able to find the notes you're after.

Similar experimentation with the other chord shapes will familiarize you with alterations to their basic structure. You may not even care what the name of the actual note is. You'll simply learn what it sounds like when, for example, you move your pinky from the first string to the same fret on the second string within the Long-A shape.

This is all harder to describe than it is to actually do. Learn the basic shapes. Play what you already know but use these basic shapes in various locations to get the necessary chords. If a song has a fancier chord, try to figure out how it departs from its basic major or minor version of that chord and then figure out what note you need to add. Finding that note will likely be easier from one of he basic shapes than from others. All this experimentation and exploration will eventually build into useful skills and it won't seem so much like studying as just enjoyable problem-solving. A simple first-position song will suddenly be playable up the neck and you can use the up-the-neck rendition as a B-part after you play the first position rendition as an A-part. Suddenly you have a fancier arrangement of that familiar song. Once you get to that point, your curiosity will likely have you exploring further and further.

Give it a shot. It's fun and actually pretty easy. You'll eventually get comfortable enough to dive into the CAGED system without giving it a second thought if you develop these basic, simplified skills and get used to applying them.

The CAGED system will fit with what you're already doing and seem quite natural. For example, you'll notice that the Long-A is actually a truncated version of the G shape. If you decided to stretch over to the 5th and 6th strings and try fretting them in the right places (no easy feat), there's your G shape. But you may not need to play those bass strings or you may be able to play them open from certain positions on the neck. So, that Long-A shape will work oftentimes. And you may also notice that the D shape is similarly a truncated version of the C shape. Again, if you stretch a bit and add your ring finger to the 5th string, you can convert the 4-string D shape into a 5-string C shape. If you play that shape in the usual D position with the index finger across the second fret, and slide the whole shape down two frets, the index finger falls off the end of the finger board and there's your open C. The fingers you're using on the specific frets may be unusual (for example instead of the index finger on the first fret of the second string, it's you middle finger) but all the notes of the C chord are being played in their usual positions.

Point is, if you learn the 4-string D and the Long-A, and combine it with the F shape you already know (which is referred to as the E shape in the caged system) you will actually be playing with the CAGED system without even realizing it. Learn to move simplified, 3- or 4-sring versions of those shapes up and down the neck and the rest will follow naturally.

[G-Money]

That was really outstanding Bob. Thanks to all who posted ideas and approaches here! Eager to hear more

[varmonter]

guess i dont quite havevthis right see link in next post. sorry

[varmonter]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gkcw9CzLA-A&t=254s

[Moonlightmile]

Rick, as a beginner of just about a year (an older one to boot) thanks for posting that question.......trying to learn the big picture on how it all fits and is built is one of my biggest challenges........I can see how some get frustrated and throw in the towel fairly early.....

I’m trudging along though.....not giving up!!

[JohnW63]

From reading most of this, it's clear that not everyone learns the same way or thinks about the fretboard in the same way. For me, what has started working is realizing that the scales in order can and do move across the strings from 6th to 1st string in chunks of 4 frets at a time and also move down the string from the open E to the 12 fret on the starting string. Really obvious and really tedious to learn a note at a time. How do I get past that and USE it ?

I found this image in a search.
http://www.jayskyler.com/images/Guit...erns-Chart.png

There are only 5 Pentatonic shapes and they are connected to each other like a tire tread going round and round. If you learn the 5 shapes you can then walk up or down the fretboard with the previous or next shape in the sequence. All you need to do is fine ONE as the sign post.

I used the " Find the root of the scale on 6th string or 5th string" approach since I could learn just two strings by memory or quick musical alphabet from a known note. You just need to shift the pattern by 3 frets to land on the minor scales. I made chart and 5 flash cards to get them sort of memorized.

From there, I just find simple backing tracks on YouTube. Learn the patter for Am at the 5th fret for example and then play any of those notes in any sequence with the Am backing track going and you will be soloing. Learn all 5 patterns and you could solo over any key in major or minor keys. Keep in mind that the pentatonic scales are partial scales. 5 note scales, in fact, so if you have a jazz song to play around, you will not always be fully in the key since some important sounds will be using notes the pentatonic scale skips. But it's a great place to start ?

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by JohnW63

From reading most of this, it's clear that not everyone learns the same way or thinks about the fretboard in the same way. For me, what has started working is realizing that the scales in order can and do move across the strings from 6th to 1st string in chunks of 4 frets at a time and also move down the string from the open E to the 12 fret on the starting string. Really obvious and really tedious to learn a note at a time. How do I get past that and USE it ?

I found this image in a search.
http://www.jayskyler.com/images/Guit...erns-Chart.png

There are only 5 Pentatonic shapes and they are connected to each other like a tire tread going round and round. If you learn the 5 shapes you can then walk up or down the fretboard with the previous or next shape in the sequence. All you need to do is fine ONE as the sign post.

I used the " Find the root of the scale on 6th string or 5th string" approach since I could learn just two strings by memory or quick musical alphabet from a known note. You just need to shift the pattern by 3 frets to land on the minor scales. I made chart and 5 flash cards to get them sort of memorized.

From there, I just find simple backing tracks on YouTube. Learn the patter for Am at the 5th fret for example and then play any of those notes in any sequence with the Am backing track going and you will be soloing. Learn all 5 patterns and you could solo over any key in major or minor keys. Keep in mind that the pentatonic scales are partial scales. 5 note scales, in fact, so if you have a jazz song to play around, you will not always be fully in the key since some important sounds will be using notes the pentatonic scale skips. But it's a great place to start ?

Each of those 5 patterns in your chart correspond to one of the 5 CAGED forms, which have also been discussed in this thread. What you have in that chart, then, is one piece of the overall CAGED system. For some of us, the CAGED system presents a very systematic means of traversing the fretboard. For others, it can be confusing and possibly another approach would be better suited.

Tony

[Ludere]

@ tbeltrans, your post (#18) makes sense to me ... I am going to attempt to apply that methodology ... thanks!

~ Paul

...

[Woolbury]

When we were young, we learned the alphabet by writing each letter on a page, simply learning the letters themselves, before we could form words or sentences, then paragraphs. I think of the caged system in the same manner. Its the building blocks that you use to create music. But I also see the fret board in many other ways, as chord shapes, as arpeggios, as interval shapes, as linear lines. As fast as you learn one roadmap, you move on to the next and begin to see them overlap each other. Then you begin open tunings and start all over again

[tbeltrans]

There is a thread right here in this sub-forum on fretboard freedom:

https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/...d.php?t=542165

...taught by Mr. Beaumont who hangs out here and in the jazz guitar forum. The guy is both a teacher by trade (profession?) and plays jazz guitar quite well, a winning combination for those looking for some guidance. Rather than a system, he teaches a means of finding your way around the fretboard in a rather musical manner. As I have said, we each have our own learning style, and now we have several different ways of approaching the fretboard to choose from.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Ludere

@ tbeltrans, your post (#18) makes sense to me ... I am going to attempt to apply that methodology ... thanks!

~ Paul

...

Thanks Paul. I am glad to read that some of my suggestions have "hit home".

Tony