Jimmy Bruno: Lesson One

[MarkRhodes]

Jimmy is back to making videos.
I was enrolled in his online school for a while. I remember submitting a video with the five fingerings and getting his approval. (His approval is not the easiest thing to get. He wouldn't hesitate to say you f**ked up and have to do it all over again.)

[AllanAllen]

I’ve been enjoying these. This particular video got me to start shedding the basic chord inversions. I already know the fingerings.

[Big Mac]

This is what he's referencing when he mentions the "five fingerings?"

[losaltosjoe]

This is what he's referencing when he mentions the "five fingerings?"

Big Mac, Not exactly. Check out this video. His naming convention for the 5 fingerings is based on the starting degree of the scale (i.e., Fingerings 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7).

Regards, Joe

[AllanAllen]

These, it’s the full scale not pentatonics. His might be marginally different.

Shared album - Allan A - Google Photos

[losaltosjoe]

[SOLR]

Using this simple but efficient template you can get all the keys with all the scale positions

Guitar Creative | Scales

and it will give you as explained by J Bruno

position 5 of C scale (starts on cdefGab) 3rd fret 6th string etc...and so on 6th pos is on fret 5 (A) still key of C

It repeats again pos 5 at 15 th fret and so on...


and key of F
or you can choose to select only specific frets so it's easier to see. like this : position 5 Key of C..


S

[MarkRhodes]

Once upon a time someone asked Jimmy about "CAGED" fingerings and he went ballistic.
The fingerings are the same but that's not where Jimmy got them (-the "CAGED system" is fairly recent in origin though those fingerings are old).
The fingerings are nice because they have no shifts.
Joe Pass used the same ones. Ron Eschete figured them out from listening to Joe Pass records and wondering how he always had convenient lines to play for whatever chord voicing (grip) he happened to be using. (He asked Joe about this and Joe said yeah, that's right.)
Mimi Fox does too. (This is clear from her book "Guitar Arpeggio Studies on Jazz Standards.")

They're very handy. Once you get used to them, your chord voicings, arps, and scales are linked up.

I did the five fingerings in all 12 keys this morning. Took less than 10 minutes. If I do this every day for a while, it will probably take 5 or 6.

[KingKong]

Under what ever name you give it, these 5 fingering positions are HOW to play the guitar, any style apart from classical where I believe they don't move the hand to transpose ( not for me lol).

In each of these positions you can very easily play lots of different scales:
- major, minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, harmonic minor
just by changing which note you are using as the root or adding / subtracting a note or 2.

Do it this way and lots of 'concerns' become irrelevant:

- learning all the note names of the fretboard..... no need, your always able to say if a given note is the root/4th/5th for a given key, by knowing which of the 5 positions you are in. It is more important to know that a given note is e.g. the 5th than to know it is e.g. G#.

- learning stuff in all 12 keys. Play enough songs that are in different keys using this 'CAGED' method and you'll soon be able to transpose stuff simply by moving the hand.

There is also the fact that you can play functional versions of all 7 chords of the key in each position. By functional I mean like 3 - 4 note versions. This give you lots of scope for varying your comping and also for chord melody ( which I don't really do but could try if I wanted).
This is precisely what Joe Pass is on about when he talks about always having a chord grip available when he is soloing / always being able to play lines around a given chord.

You come across people saying that there are 7 positions not 5. I've never seen this point as the additional 2 positions are as far as I can see exactly the same as 2 of the original 5.

So here is a practice routine that I am kind of applying to each tune I learn:

1. Take 'position 1'.
2. Comp the tune using chords in position 1.
3. Solo the tune using position 1.

Repeat ^^ for each position.
( I'm lazy, I'm only really doing this for 3 of the positions but just doing 3 still give good options for variation)

[Big Mac]

How would knowing these 5 positions help one to navigate this:

[Litterick]

I like knowing things and learning stuff. I enjoy the freedom to move around the fretboard. I don't want my playing to be caged.

[AllanAllen]

It's like asking how tying a knot will help you sail to the new world. It's one piece, but if you don't know it, you aren't getting far.

[PMB]

The fingerings are nice because they have no shifts.

Isn't part of the attraction to the five 'CAGED' fingerings that they incorporate shifts rather than extensions? I think of the seven 'Leavitt' fingerings as non-shifting as they're each determined by the fixed placement of the 2nd or 3rd finger with the 1st and 4th stretching out to cover all chromatics within a 6-fret span.

[KingKong]

I like knowing things and learning stuff. I enjoy the freedom to move around the fretboard. I don't want my playing to be caged.

It won't be, the opposite is the case.
Learn this way in all 5 positions and you will have immediate access to every possible note for the key on neck, know what it is and what to do with it.

[KingKong]

How would knowing these 5 positions help one to navigate this:

1. Figure out what key it is in, or keys if it has sections in different keys.

2. Pick one of the 5 positions for the key and play the tune, be it chords or melody.

3. If it changes key, shift your mindset to the positions for that key.

[KingKong]

Isn't part of the attraction to the five 'CAGED' fingerings that they incorporate shifts rather than extensions? I think of the seven 'Leavitt' fingerings as non-shifting as they're each determined by the fixed placement of the 2nd or 3rd finger with the 1st and 4th stretching out to cover all chromatics within a 6-fret span.

Yes, you can play your arpeggios really easily and use sweep picking across the notes because of how they are laid out.

[Laurence Finston]

You come across people saying that there are 7 positions not 5. I've never seen this point as the additional 2 positions are as far as I can see exactly the same as 2 of the original 5.

The reason they say this is that if you take five adjacent frets, say, 1 through 5, then you can play 7 maj. or minor scales (and most other kinds of scales) without shifting your hand more than by 1 fret at a time. In this example, the roots would be on frets 1, 3 and 5 on the sixth and fifth strings and on 1 on the fourth string. After that, they start to repeat.

I'm not making any judgement on the merits of the system you described. I practiced positions and scales a lot but for quite awhile now I no longer think in terms of positions. I can play with my hand more-or-less stationary and I can go up and down the strings. What helped me most was playing chord melodies. It takes you all over the fretboard. If I'm soloing, I just play by ear. I don't think about note names or chords or positions. It's somewhere in the back of my mind.

I don't solo with chords except in a very rudimentary way. That's just not the way my mind works. If it was something I really wanted to do, I would practice it, but it isn't.

I believe it is very valuable to know the note names at all positions of the fretboard as well as the intervals. However, to each his own.

Another extremely valuable thing to do is to learn to play a fretless instrument.

[MarkRhodes]

Isn't part of the attraction to the five 'CAGED' fingerings that they incorporate shifts rather than extensions? I think of the seven 'Leavitt' fingerings as non-shifting as they're each determined by the fixed placement of the 2nd or 3rd finger with the 1st and 4th stretching out to cover all chromatics within a 6-fret span.

Good point. I misspoke. They do shift but have no stretches. Thanks for the opportunity to clear this up!

[MarkRhodes]

I like knowing things and learning stuff. I enjoy the freedom to move around the fretboard. I don't want my playing to be caged.

Jimmy's playing is anything but "caged." His playing on "Burnin'" is much hotter than this but this video has the advantage of letting you see how he plays what he plays. He and Frank have done a lot of gigs together since this outing. (There's a whole 'album' of it.)

[PMB]

Under what ever name you give it, these 5 fingering positions are HOW to play the guitar, any style apart from classical where I believe they don't move the hand to transpose (not for me lol).

The five fingerings are certainly ONE way to play the guitar. While certain major players such as Joe Pass and Pat Martino gravitated towards those patterns, I believe it's worth investigating alternatives.

Speaking from my own experience, I began as a pre-teen on both guitar and piano and initially played melodies upon one string where possible. That approach was probably transferred from my keyboard experience.

Some years later, a friend alerted me to the five fingering positions. Learning all my major and minor scales and arpeggios within these forms proved very useful both technically and in regards to understanding the guitar neck as a whole. However, there was a niggling feeling that these fingerings were beginning to take on a 'predictive' quality with the proverbial tail wagging the dog.

The inherent danger of any exclusive system is that by nature it is never all-encompassing. I'm reminded of Bruce Lee's 'no way as way' maxim and the following particularly apt statement from his Tao of Jeet Kune Do:

"Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage. Truth is outside of all patterns".

The revelation for me came when transcribing Parker lines and trying to adapt them to the guitar. The more triadic and pentatonic-based thinking of earlier players such as Lester Young seemed ideally suited to the architecture of CAGED forms (as successfully demonstrated by Charlie Christian) yet Parker's more pronounced use of chromaticism and slurs proved to be more of a stumbling block. In their own ways, guitarists such as Chuck Wayne, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney addressed these anomalies.

I soon began an equally exhaustive investigation of both 7-position Leavitt and 3 notes-per-string fingerings. My goal was to superimpose all these approaches until they were 'erased' leaving only what was needed in the moment to express a musical idea adequately. To use a toolbox analogy, sometimes it's easier to remove a nail with a pair of pliers than a hammer!

[MarkRhodes]

It's like asking how tying a knot will help you sail to the new world. It's one piece, but if you don't know it, you aren't getting far.

There's a reason Jimmy calls this material "Lesson One."

[PMB]

Yes, you can play your arpeggios really easily and use sweep picking across the notes because of how they are laid out.

That's true in most cases but if you want to sweep pick scales, 3NPS are a more suitable option as Chuck Wayne discovered. Frank Gambale extended this concept into his own 'system'.

[KingKong]

The five fingerings are certainly ONE way to play the guitar. While certain major players such as Joe Pass and Pat Martino gravitated towards those patterns, I believe it's worth investigating alternatives.

Speaking from my own experience, I began as a pre-teen on both guitar and piano and initially played melodies upon one string where possible. That approach was probably transferred from my keyboard experience.

Some years later, a friend alerted me to the five fingering positions. Learning all my major and minor scales and arpeggios within these forms proved very useful both technically and in regards to understanding the guitar neck as a whole. However, there was a niggling feeling that these fingerings were beginning to take on a 'predictive' quality with the proverbial tale wagging the dog.

The inherent danger of any exclusive system is that by nature it is never all-encompassing. I'm reminded of Bruce Lee's 'no way as way' maxim and the following particularly apt statement from his Tao of Jeet Kune Do:

"Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage. Truth is outside of all patterns".

The revelation for me came when transcribing Parker lines and trying to adapt them to the guitar. The more triadic and pentatonic-based thinking of earlier players such as Lester Young seemed ideally suited to the architecture of CAGED forms (as successfully demonstrated by Charlie Christian) yet Parker's more pronounced use of chromaticism and slurs proved to be more of a stumbling block. In their own ways, guitarists such as Chuck Wayne, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney addressed these anomalies.

I soon began an equally exhaustive investigation of both 7-position Leavitt and 3 notes-per-string fingerings. My goal was to superimpose all these approaches until they were 'erased' leaving only what was needed in the moment to express a musical idea adequately. To use a toolbox analogy, sometimes it's easier to remove a nail with a pair of pliers than a hammer!

This is all good, agree completely. I reckon yes what you say is true, learned finger patterns can become limiting.

I thing the next step with the '5 positions' approach is definitely to break out of them, to start linking them up so that it all blends into one.

[ccroft]

....to start linking them up so that it all blends into one.

The Grand Unified Diatonic Pattern.

You learn how the 5 lay and move. And then you start to see in-between options. I used to pick a key, play the lowest pattern ascending, shift up to the next one in the same key and play it descending, shift and ascend until you get to the end of the neck. Then go back down. Then shift two patterns in the same kind of way. Then another key. Then I started to see the 3nps patterns that lay between and connect Jimi's 5. The ones with the little stretches for every-other fret.

It's gratifying for me to read this discussion. Not sure why, but I ended up with his same shapes. It's what I figured out for myself about 54 years ago. I figured out do-re-me and got shape 1, and then I wanted to know where the rest of the notes were further up the neck.

Bruno's naming method is interesting. I'll have to think about that some more. I never gave them names. They're just parts of G.U.D.P. to me. And it is sorta like CAGED when you start seeing the chords that are contained in them.

[ccroft]

PMB's post is really good. I guess that's what I'm talking about. In the early going you kinda get boxed in by these 5 patterns. But like Mark said, this is just Lesson1.