What is the best Scale System to use when reading music?

[RossThrock]

Hello,

My question concerns the various scale systems used in guitar playing. From what I've gathered, there are three popular scale systems: CAGED (5 positions), 3 Notes Per String (7 positions), and the William Leavitt system (12 positions). When strictly reading passages within one position on the fingerboard, Leavitt's method seems to work well. However, most of the time when I read sheet music, there's a lot of position shifting, which I feel makes the Leavitt method less practical. I've always preferred the 5-position CAGED system, but I'm unsure if it's the correct system to use when reading music. Additionally, what are good resources for reading music on guitar and other materials to practice sight-reading? Also, are there any resources that can help with reading chords as well as chord-melody?

Thanks!

[Christian Miller]

That’s a very good question. I don’t know the answer.

My own experience is that I came into reading by working positionally (the Leavitt way perhaps).
Now I read less positionally.

I think any consistently used system will be fine. CAGED is perfectly good.

A beginning reader reads the notes on the page. A good reader plays the music on the page. That probably sounds a bit asinine, but what I mean is that if you, for example, see a blues lick written out you should play it with same fingering as you would normally play a blues lick, with all the feel and vibe it would normally have. Same for a common bop line, and so on and so forth.

So reading becomes less about translating pitches and rhythms in real time, and more about spotting and interpreting musical objects ahead of time; scales, arps, licks, voicings and so on and so forth. Same for rhythms - Charleston, push, dotted quarter etc etc

That is MUCH easier said than done, requires a LOT of reading practice, and I honestly don’t know if you have to go through the Leavitt style positional sight reading grind to get to the musical interpretation stage, or if there’s another way.

Bear in mind many people advocate their path to it as if it’s the only way…


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[Christian Miller]

Hello,

My question concerns the various scale systems used in guitar playing. From what I've gathered, there are three popular scale systems: CAGED (5 positions), 3 Notes Per String (7 positions), and the William Leavitt system (12 positions). When strictly reading passages within one position on the fingerboard, Leavitt's method seems to work well. However, most of the time when I read sheet music, there's a lot of position shifting, which I feel makes the Leavitt method less practical. I've always preferred the 5-position CAGED system, but I'm unsure if it's the correct system to use when reading music. Additionally, what are good resources for reading music on guitar and other materials to practice sight-reading? Also, are there any resources that can help with reading chords as well as chord-melody?

Thanks!

I would recommend Adam Levy’s Sightreading for Jazz Guitar

Mostly I read my way through the real books, Omnibook and any other transcription books I can find. You can also find resources with sheet music on line and YouTube videos with transcriptions and scores for all styles of music (although the page turns are always too late haha.)


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[RossThrock]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your insight!

[rpjazzguitar]

I have not found that scale systems help me read. The best position and fingering depend on what is in the chart. You know the fingerboard and you find the notes. If your fingering doesn't work, you figure out one that does.

[RossThrock]

I have not found that scale systems help me read. The best position and fingering depend on what is in the chart. You know the fingerboard and you find the notes. If your fingering doesn't work, you figure out one that does.

I'm starting to come to that conclusion myself. Thank you so much .

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=RossThrock;1335122]Hello,

My question concerns the various scale systems used in guitar playing. From what I've gathered, there are three popular scale systems: CAGED (5 positions), 3 Notes Per String (7 positions), and the William Leavitt system (12 positions). When strictly reading passages within one position on the fingerboard, Leavitt's method seems to work well. However, most of the time when I read sheet music, there's a lot of position shifting, which I feel makes the Leavitt method less practical. I've always preferred the 5-position CAGED system, but I'm unsure if it's the correct system to use when reading music. Additionally, what are good resources for reading music on guitar and other materials to practice sight-reading? Also, are there any resources that can help with reading chords as well as chord-melody?

I use most methods that work for me. I was thankful my teacher pushed the ALL KEYS approach-thus leaving no mystery areas on the fretboard.

Back when I used the Howard Roberts Sight Reading Manual (out of print )..The lasting tip that I still use is finding the highest and lowest note in the music.

This will give you some indication of what area you will need to be for that section of the music. Now learning how to connect "areas" via scales, arps or other methods is the task that ensures smooth playing.

Today there is a vast amount of printed music of all styles available online from many sources. I like sax studies in all keys and Real Book for standards.

I also study some transcripts of Metheny and Scofield just to study their "thinking" and use some of their lines in my own playing.

[Mick-7]

[QUOTE=wolflen;1336276]

Back when I used the Howard Roberts Sight Reading Manual (out of print ).

We can share out of print materials here, see the attached.

[RossThrock]

[QUOTE=wolflen;1336276]

Hello,

My question concerns the various scale systems used in guitar playing. From what I've gathered, there are three popular scale systems: CAGED (5 positions), 3 Notes Per String (7 positions), and the William Leavitt system (12 positions). When strictly reading passages within one position on the fingerboard, Leavitt's method seems to work well. However, most of the time when I read sheet music, there's a lot of position shifting, which I feel makes the Leavitt method less practical. I've always preferred the 5-position CAGED system, but I'm unsure if it's the correct system to use when reading music. Additionally, what are good resources for reading music on guitar and other materials to practice sight-reading? Also, are there any resources that can help with reading chords as well as chord-melody?

I use most methods that work for me. I was thankful my teacher pushed the ALL KEYS approach-thus leaving no mystery areas on the fretboard.

Back when I used the Howard Roberts Sight Reading Manual (out of print )..The lasting tip that I still use is finding the highest and lowest note in the music.

This will give you some indication of what area you will need to be for that section of the music. Now learning how to connect "areas" via scales, arps or other methods is the task that ensures smooth playing.

Today there is a vast amount of printed music of all styles available online from many sources. I like sax studies in all keys and Real Book for standards.

I also study some transcripts of Metheny and Scofield just to study their "thinking" and use some of their lines in my own playing.

What do you mean by the "all keys" approach? I'm a little confused.

[rpjazzguitar]

There just isn't a single approach that you can apply to any music.

Even the thing about thinking about the range of the music. Obviously, you have to be in position to play the lowest and highest notes. So, you may have to move around, in fact, it's likely.

But, you also get to look for rests. Even an eighth note rest allows you to completely reposition your hands. Not everything is a string of consecutive rapid notes without a break. Of course, that can happen and it may take some thought to find a fingering that works, including the picking.

It's case by case. You look at the music and figure out something to try. If it doesn't work, you try something else. Sometimes it can be surprising how many different ways there are to play a given line.

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=Mick-7;1336295]

We can share out of print materials here, see the attached.

Ahh..it like seeing an old friend...Thanks so much

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=RossThrock;1336302]

What do you mean by the "all keys" approach? I'm a little confused.

ok..say you have a 7 position scale exercise in C major then learn it in F then Bb Eb Ab Db Gb/F# B E A D G

but it is more than just exercises..it applies to songs and solos you create..licks and tricks ..anything you can play

hope this is what you were asking about..

[Mick-7]

[QUOTE=wolflen;1336352]

Ahh..it like seeing an old friend...Thanks so much

You're welcome... I had already shared it, along with a few other out-of-print HR books, in this other thread:

20 weeks to a higher level of proficiency: Howard Roberts Super Chops one more time.

[RossThrock]

[QUOTE=Mick-7;1336356]

You're welcome... I had already shared it, along with a few other out-of-print HR books, in this other thread:

20 weeks to a higher level of proficiency: Howard Roberts Super Chops one more time.

Thanks for sharing this. The mediafile link you posted in that thread doesn't load for me sadly. I forgot all about the HR Books.

[RossThrock]

[QUOTE=wolflen;1336354]

ok..say you have a 7 position scale exercise in C major then learn it in F then Bb Eb Ab Db Gb/F# B E A D G

but it is more than just exercises..it applies to songs and solos you create..licks and tricks ..anything you can play

hope this is what you were asking about..

Oh okay. I was overthinking that haha.

[Mick-7]

[QUOTE=RossThrock;1336358]

Thanks for sharing this. The mediafile link you posted in that thread doesn't load for me sadly. I forgot all about the HR Books.

I just fixed the link for HR's books, thanks for pointing out the problem.

[starjasmine]

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That is, the more ways you learn to think about any musical skill, the more options you have. So don't look for the "best" way as a shortcut. Learn all the ways. To be sure, pick one and start there, but don't kid yourself about not needing to know about the others.

I first learned the naive approach to reading: Mel Bay books when I was a kid.

Learning a couple years of harmony in uni moved me from reading individual notes to seeing patterns: how thirds stacked diatonically generate a set of chords or arpeggios, how an accidental means that a note is out-of-key, and all of the possibilities that that can imply, such as a neighbor tone, a suspension, a secondary dominant, a chord substitution. I started to read the DIFFERENCES from the diatonic key, because all of the vanilla diatonic notes were a known quantity that was under my fingers and in my ears.

Concurrent with my first two years of harmony, I took two years of classic guitar. A lot of sight-reading out of the Frederic Noad books. This was good for two things: just doing a lot of reading of standard notation helps you to identify notes and their positions on the fretboard quickly, and because Noad is a graduated method (the pieces increase in difficulty as you work your way through the books) your overall skill level both as a player and a reader develops.

Then I switched to jazz and Steve Erquiaga showed me how to play single lines in any key and any mode in any position (position being the fret that your first finger is on) with a stretch of the index finger out of position to be able to fret all 12 notes of the chromatic scale without changing position. (I've never read the Leavitt book, but I gather that this is what it's about.) Combining this with the knowledge of key, mode, and scale enabled me to see any mode, any key, any arpeggio, in any position. Although I grasped the concept within the course of a one-hour lesson (because I already had two years of harmony and ear training under my belt), it took me another year to be able to implement it in real time, and then years more of doing it daily to remove the thinking from the equation. So don't be discouraged if this is monumentally difficult and takes a long time - it is difficult and it does take a lot of time and effort, for everyone!

Steve also introduced me to "Reading Rhythms" by Charles Colin and Bugs Bower. I really needed this, because I wasn't exposed to a lot of syncopation in classic guitar studies. This is another graduated method, all single-line melodies, which is nice, because you can focus on reading the rhythms instead of trying to read a bunch of chords and counterpoint.

Also... learn to read common chord symbols and learn the basic movable chord system. This is another thing I got from studying with Steve. I don't really have a method here - we would just pick tunes from the Real Book, and I'd read the head, comp with movable chords, and improvise.

Steve did give me the following very useful tips for cold reading: immediately identify the highest and lowest notes in the piece, so you have an idea of what parts of the neck you need to cover, look for key changes and get a quick take on the overall form. If you have ten seconds to look at a new chart, you can do this. If you have a minute, start reading through it to identify tricky spots (harmonically, rhythmically, mechanical technique) and try to work them out.

Practice reading by looking at new tunes every day no more than twice. I sight-read the Real Book v1 and the Standards Real Book a few pages at a time over the course of a couple years. First reading is just like what I said above: a quick look and a cold read over the entire form of the tune. Maybe take the head up an octave on the second verse or chorus. This doesn't have to be at tempo - you want to build skill, not bad habits! Then a second reading where you try to correct some of the mistakes from the first reading. Then move on to another tune. You are practicing sight-reading, not learning the tune. (You might put post-it notes on tunes to return to later to work up as performance pieces.)

I was basically a 12-position player when I began studying with Jackie King, who showed me (among other things) how CAGED shapes can be used to organize the fretting patterns for any scale. That is, how each of the CAGED shapes would appear in different places on the neck for ONE chord. Here's an example that shows how G major plays out across the fretboard in each of the CAGED shapes. It's kind of amazing that I played for so long without knowing this! I knew the fretboard and my scales, but I didn't have the simple mapping of all of that info to CAGED. It was really helpful for organizing my mental model of the fretboard.

Jackie also taught me ways to move between positions and how to shift positions to play any scale, arpeggio or idea through three octaves (basically, the length of the guitar neck.) When sight-reading I use a lot of what Steve showed me with Jackie's approach to move through positions as necessary to execute an idea.

So... start with one approach, but learn them all.

HTH

SJ

PS - 3NPS is an approach to fingering and speed-picking for improvisation. It's not a way to sight-read. I'm really not much of a 3NPS player, either, so if that's patently incorrect, someone please straighten me out. But I can't see how 3 NPS would help you sight-read.

[RossThrock]

Then I switched to jazz and Steve Erquiaga showed me how to play single lines in any key and any mode in any position (position being the fret that your first finger is on) with a stretch of the index finger out of position to be able to fret all 12 notes of the chromatic scale without changing position.

Jackie also taught me ways to move between positions and how to shift positions to play any scale, arpeggio or idea through three octaves (basically, the length of the guitar neck.) When sight-reading I use a lot of what Steve showed me with Jackie's approach to move through positions as necessary to execute an idea.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that! Do you mind elaborating more on these two points though?

[starjasmine]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that! Do you mind elaborating more on these two points though?

Sure. It's best shown with a fingering diagram or a video so it might take me a day or two though.

I might be able to explain point 1 in text:
- Suppose you want to play an ascending chromatic scale from C with your 1st finger at the 8th fret on the 6th string aka VIII position. Let's also agree that you'll use strict one-finger-per-fret fingering.

- You can play C, C#, D, D# without changing position, but E is not under any of your fingers.

- One well-known chromatic scale fingering would have you shift your entire hand down one position to VII pos to reach E on the 5th string at the 7th fret with your first finger, then play E F F# G as fingers 1 2 3 4 in VII pos. Then when you get to G# you have the same problem: it's not under any of your fingers. So you'd shift your entire hand left again to reach G# with your 1st finger on the 6th fret on the 4th string. And so on... it looks like this:


Notice that we don't need to stretch out of position when moving from the G to the B string; because these two strings are only a M3 apart instead of a P4, all the chromatic notes lie under these two strings in one position. It's that extra half-step between all the other string pairs that puts one note out of position, necessitating a change of hand position - or a temporary stretch out of position - to reach it.

- The "chromatic scale without changing position" approach would have you stay in VIII position the entire time. When you get to E, you play that on the 7th fret on the 5th string with your FIRST finger WITHOUT moving your hand. You stretch your first finger to fret the out-of-position note without moving your hand. Then, to play F, you use your first finger again, in the normal position. And you continue this approach, stretching your first finger out of position for the note that is not in position, then fretting the next chromatic note up with your first finger again in normal position.

Assuming that you are fretting with your left hand and you are looking down on the fretboard so that the strings are
E
B
G
D
A
E

the fingering for the entire chromatic scale in one position would be as follows:

Notice that we don't need to stretch out of position when moving from the G to the B string, which is also the case with the other fingering.

HTH

SJ

[Christian Miller]

I don’t see why you couldn’t use 3nps to sight read?

One thing I find a lot on this forum is that people often tie together fingering and fretboard mapping as one thing. I would say I’ve got a lot from getting away from this conception and separating the two things.)

I don’t know how necessary this is for students starting out (I’m not saying it isn’t - I’m saying I honestly don’t know) but I tend to teach classical positions, starting with open. Teaching D major in 1st position is difficulty spike for beginners who’ve learned to associate, say, 3rd finger with the note D or G.

As a lot of my job is about smoothing out difficulty spikes, I always wonder if there’s a way to do it that trades off differently in terms of those difficulty spikes. I’m not sure I can think of one.

Anyway….


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[diamondjazzy]

Honestly, just Dorian and Phrygian.

[RossThrock]

Sure. It's best shown with a fingering diagram or a video so it might take me a day or two though.

I might be able to explain point 1 in text:
- Suppose you want to play an ascending chromatic scale from C with your 1st finger at the 8th fret on the 6th string aka VIII position. Let's also agree that you'll use strict one-finger-per-fret fingering.

- You can play C, C#, D, D# without changing position, but E is not under any of your fingers.

- One well-known chromatic scale fingering would have you shift your entire hand down one position to VII pos to reach E on the 5th string at the 7th fret with your first finger, then play E F F# G as fingers 1 2 3 4 in VII pos. Then when you get to G# you have the same problem: it's not under any of your fingers. So you'd shift your entire hand left again to reach G# with your 1st finger on the 6th fret on the 4th string. And so on... it looks like this:


Notice that we don't need to stretch out of position when moving from the G to the B string; because these two strings are only a M3 apart instead of a P4, all the chromatic notes lie under these two strings in one position. It's that extra half-step between all the other string pairs that puts one note out of position, necessitating a change of hand position - or a temporary stretch out of position - to reach it.

- The "chromatic scale without changing position" approach would have you stay in VIII position the entire time. When you get to E, you play that on the 7th fret on the 5th string with your FIRST finger WITHOUT moving your hand. You stretch your first finger to fret the out-of-position note without moving your hand. Then, to play F, you use your first finger again, in the normal position. And you continue this approach, stretching your first finger out of position for the note that is not in position, then fretting the next chromatic note up with your first finger again in normal position.

Assuming that you are fretting with your left hand and you are looking down on the fretboard so that the strings are
E
B
G
D
A
E

the fingering for the entire chromatic scale in one position would be as follows:

Notice that we don't need to stretch out of position when moving from the G to the B string, which is also the case with the other fingering.

HTH

SJ

A video would be so helpful. But this explained so much, real eyeopener for me.

[starjasmine]

I don’t see why you couldn’t use 3nps to sight read?

It seems to me that 3NPS is primarily intended to encourage consistent alternate picking motion, and to help with covering ground on the fretboard. 3NPS introduces position shifts that you don't have to deal with when using the standard positional approach. So now you have to deal with position shifting in addition to reading. IMO 3NPS would complicate sight-reading rather than simplify it.

But I suppose that whatever you practice and get good at is your best tool for any task at hand. If you have 3NPS down cold and don't know the standard positional approach, then, yeah, the latter would be more difficult.

[rpjazzguitar]

I don’t see why you couldn’t use 3nps to sight read?

One thing I find a lot on this forum is that people often tie together fingering and fretboard mapping as one thing. I would say I’ve got a lot from getting away from this conception and separating the two things.)

I don’t know how necessary this is for students starting out (I’m not saying it isn’t - I’m saying I honestly don’t know) but I tend to teach classical positions, starting with open. Teaching D major in 1st position is difficulty spike for beginners who’ve learned to associate, say, 3rd finger with the note D or G.

As a lot of my job is about smoothing out difficulty spikes, I always wonder if there’s a way to do it that trades off differently in terms of those difficulty spikes. I’m not sure I can think of one.

Anyway….


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I may have this completely wrong, but I sometimes think a lot of the discussion of fingerings and patterns is to compensate for not knowing the names of the notes everywhere on the fretboard.

If you know the note on the printed page (or screen) and you know where it is on the guitar, what advantage could there be in trying to relate it to a fingering of a scale? I guess if you were playing Do Re Mi, it might work, but when else?

[starjasmine]

A video would be so helpful. But this explained so much, real eyeopener for me.