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Something I do that I find very useful for playing the changes is, when I'm practicing the major scale in a position, I choose a chord, say min7b5. Then when I do my usual major scale exercises (thirds, patterns etc), I see everything w.r.t. that chord intervallically. The next time I choose a different chord, say dominant, and see the exercises in relation to that chord etc.
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01-10-2024 01:00 PM
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Hi !
Play something on the first position, put a capo on the 5th fret, play the same keeping the same pitch (no matter if it's not on the same range), just the pitch, put the capo on the 8th fret, you can say it's done.
EADGBE
ADGCEA
CFBbEbGC
The CAGED system has its limits, it looks like transposing shapes even if it's useful when it's about fingering, it looks like positions.
After this, put the capo wherever you want.
I personally hide it in case you find it I prefer staying away.
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Category error: this is music, not maths. Music happens in time. I was recalling an historic practice of working musicians, that was quite unrelated to the technique developed in the 1970s.
Originally Posted by pauln
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Taking this into consideration, the only solution is to focus horizontally on each string instead of by vertical position. Originally Posted by freud
A vertical/positional approach feels like a tiny miniature piano in which all the notes are jumbled randomly like a remote jungle thicket.
A single string is extremely similar to a keyboard. It ends up feeling like a large piano if you compare the distance an octave on a string to on a keyboard.
You have to think vertically if you want to play things a pianist would, but horizontally to think and feel more like a pianist.
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One thing a pianist knows is the name of every note on the keyboard, instantly without thought.
How does the pianist find chords? I've never asked a pianist, but I'd guess some might do it by intervals from the root and/or by knowing the notes in the chords they want, by name. And, eventually, an instinct for it by sound. I do know that there are some shape based elements.
Perhaps a pianist will chime in here?
When I read guitar forums I get the impression that guitarist do this differently -- that even some good players aren't thinking about note names. Rather, it's grip or position/interval based. Is that much correct?
My approach, after some decades, was to decide to learn the names of the notes in the chords and scales I use. I already knew the fingerboard from reading. It's a lot of work. But so is doing it any other way. I have no real idea if it's better. And I wouldn't bet that every player benefits equally from a specific approach.
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I guess seeing the fretboard like a pianist can be interpreted in different ways. A lot of pianists are just grip players just like most guitarists as far as I know.
My notion of seeing the fretboard like the mythical pianist is seeing every chord like the white keys of the piano on the fretboard. So if I'm on Gmin than Gmin chord tones including the extensions (ie dorian for example) light up on the fretboard and the rest are the black keys in the context. Then when the chord changes, different notes become the white keys. That's my ideal piano view of the fretboard. It's actually better than the piano.Last edited by Tal_175; 01-10-2024 at 04:44 PM.
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I think that’s a good way of putting it… ‘one for the motivated student’. It’s a lot of work, but the payoff was big, for me at least and is a continuous process. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Yeah absolutely that’s a great way of going about it, taking a shape from frets 1-5 and plugging it in a different area of the neck. Or, there is a (consistent) pattern for getting one key across the entire neck as opposed to drilling 12 keys in 5 fret areas incrementally up the neck.
Indeed it’s not, but Jimmy does make a big point of using ‘the 5 fingerings’ and that forms the basis for his approach to knowing the fretboard, even though I highly suspect, if not certain, it’s really not quite the whole story… But yeah, try the 5 fret method and share how you get on. Changed everything for me, but that doesn’t mean it will for others if they have things that work well for them. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Some people see fretboard mapping and fingering as the same thing a. People talk about CAGED and 3nps and what have you.
actually I personally regard that as completely separate from knowing where the notes are. If you can spell out BAD DAD CABBAGE FACE and the phone numbers of everyone you know with one finger
1) along all six strings one at a time
2) between frets 1-5
3) between frets 4-9
4) between frets 8-12
I think you’ll be getting there
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Maybe pianists use the same way as guitarists - chords for example are learned first as simple self things to the point of being individually produced at will. Then with experience, one learns to connect them in series or sequences that describe the harmony of changes. Then one views or hears those change patterns as their own larger simple self things. Ultimately the full progressions of songs become understood as comprised of these larger things which have cross relations between themselves, so some of them may be exchanged with others in various ways, etc.
Similarly for melodic playing of lines and phrases - nested/stacked concepts that are selected and executed from an increasingly higher (and constructively simpler) level of integration.
Seems like these things (from a foundation of long experience) are produced as agregations of components at each increasing level of integration, these becoming themselves simple self things, so executed at will without internal conversation with oneself concerning the components of the lower levels.
(Kind of like the chemical elements; it is the outer shell that determines how they interact with others...)
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There's so many great suggestions here, but here's one that I would throw out that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Get a good teacher! I played for many many years and after getting into lessons with Stephane Wrembel about 3 years ago, I have learned more and progressed more in those 3 years than I had my entire time playing before. A good teacher that is there to guide, support, and provide real-time feedback are (IMO) hugely beneficial.
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I don't like systems. You end up learning the system, not the guitar. The way I did it was play tunes from music. Doing that, you can't help but remember where the notes are and see various patterns emerge. Originally Posted by freud
But sitting with some sort of table, looking at the fingerboard as some sort of confusing grid, I wouldn't do it that way. You might eventually know the whole thing perfectly, like being able to identify all the parts of a bicycle, but it doesn't mean you can ride a bicycle.
Similarly, if the end goal is being able to play music on the guitar, you may as well start there and learn as you go. Saves time.
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You could also try to apply a system … like … to the guitar. Originally Posted by ragman1
The options are not restricted to “stare at a diagram” and “just play music, man.”
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I learnt by playing. I'm only talking from my own experience. Years later I saw the thing about the CAGED system and I thought 'Oh, right, the chords go up in shapes like that, very interesting'. But to my mind that was only academic, the fact that they repeated themselves. It's not how I was actually playing chords, and it's still not. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
So if I'd seen the CAGED thing right from the start would I have learnt quicker or differently? I doubt it. I can't prove it but I don't think so because the chord shapes were integral to the music I was playing, not an exercise.
Does that make sense? Something like that anyway. But different things work for different people, so...
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So when I learn a bebop head, I learn it in each of those CAGED shapes, more or less. Originally Posted by ragman1
Thats playing music. It’s also a way of organizing the fingerboard.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Yeah, I think the notion of "grips" or "Griffe" goes all the way back to pre-Bach baroque keyboards, and AFAIK, continued on to Bach's pedagogical material. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I certainly have shapes or grips I can immediately play for any chord with any alterations...very easy to just make up some cocktail piano out of a leadsheet or whatever. And alter anything needed. Yeah, it can be a sort of a formula that, predictably, leads to decent sounding but formulaic music. However, Bud Powell, Wynton Kelly, Red Garland....yeah, darn right they had pretty specific grips, and they sound good on piano, so I use them, and I'm pretty sure others do as well!
Even shapes or grips for scales...some of that is due to finding the best fingering for a given run and having it stick, or using generally accepted fingerings for playing very fast scales.
But I admit playing the diminished scale (well, one of the three diminished scales: C, Db, D!
) as one does on any instrument is primarily shape based, to me. That's how I still remember them....but my process is kind of weird in that way. Of course there's the sound, which is very distinctive, or even just the simple idea that the octatonic scale is a fully diminished seventh chord where each chord tone is preceded by a semitone. But if practicing hands together the diminished scale a m3 apart, or a bb7 (i.e., a sixth) apart, some cues I find are helpful.
[I'll explain that last bit....it's a standard exercise, probably included in some exams or whatever, to play scales not just hands together at the octave, but with one hand at the unison, and the other hand at either the third or the sixth....I still do it when I sit at the piano at home, which is rarely these days, what with guitar and such...not because it "builds character" or puts hair on my chest, but it sounds cool, and I can use it in improv, hypothetically.]
I think someone above pointed out that the beginning piano student, in the traditional, classical realm, is not just learning scales in all keys. That's all gravy: here's the notes, here's the fingering, now do it!
Equal (probably...I'm sure methods vary) shrift is given to triads in all inversions, and the basic cadences in all keys. (Plagal, Authentic, &c.)
For me, fretboard knowledge didn't begin to appear until I took up Garrison Fewell, and worked out every single exercise in every possible position, in every key. It's taking forever, and I'm only using the triads in root position, and TBH at this early stage of using Fewell's "method," it's really just exercises in arpeggie, but it's what's working for me.
That and the usual bit of inference....you know, what the dots represent on the fretboard (m3, P4, P5, 6th, m7) and more precisely, exactly which notes can be sounded on each set of strings. Not what pitches transposed via octaves are the same, but how each note, as represented in standard notation, is kept in check by the tessitura of each string.
Enough interesting material in Fewell, at least to keep me at what is really just rote repetition and transformation of patterns into every possible form.
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In practical terms, I think OP's take-away should be to pick one of the general approaches discussed already and work with it for some time to get some ground to stand on. Then he/she can explore the others.
No system, no matter how logical, will magically "reveal" the fretboard to anyone. They all take work to really get under the fingers. Thats the bad news.
The good news is that there is probably no absolutely right way and no absolutely wrong way to do it...
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Thanks JackalGreen - super interesting
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by Dave70
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Oh crap. Originally Posted by pauln
You know, pick a note that is a "good one" through the piece and play it. Don't risk with another.
Many pop songs go that way too nowadays.
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Here's a heretical view: Each post in this thread is skipping around the problem's root cause, standard guitar tuning (SGT). They avoid the elephant in the room by suggesting ways to compensate for the difficulties it presents, instead of switching out to a smaller, friendlier elephant. The solution is some form of practical symmetric tuning (I use fourths as it's close to SGT, only two strings different).
I experience none of these difficulties precisely because the fretboard map is dirt simple and patterns don't change from string set to string set.
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It certainly simplifies the intervallic map of the guitar. Originally Posted by P4guitar
It of course complicates the performance of existing guitar music written in standard tuning which has been around in various forms for a few hundred years*, so that’s a lot of music from 17th century Chaconnes to Guiliani etudes to AC/DC tunes. I can see it being less of an issue for stuff like jazz guitar.
I personally enjoy the quirks of standard and I enjoy seeing how people use them. Transcribing Holdsworth for example I’m struck by how much he exploits the features of standard tuning.
I suppose it depends how much of a tabula rasa iconoclast you are about this stuff, if you are the type of person who decides to play an eight string tuned in major thirds or whatever.
I guess I can’t get past seeing it as cheating. Learn the guitar properly you lazy oik haha.
But then I also said ‘there is no cheating in music.’
*although a lot baroque rep is lute rep and wasn’t written in guitar tuning of course.
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In the big scheme of things, the asymmetries of the standard tuning is a very small part of the challenge.
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Speaking of tunings... on one extreme end there is the trivial tuning (E-E-E-E-E-E) so in a sense this is literally the most simple tuning possible. Reserved possibly for stunt playing and droning effects. I thought about going for it but I figured if I try really hard enough I could achieve the mostly same way of playing with my major thirds tuning (with its multiple E's as well).
Now on the other extreme end.. the most complicated tuning... I'm not sure though there's probably multiple candidates. Would be interesting to find out
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