To me, exercises are about isolating something and breaking things into smaller chunks for an easier time of learning something bigger, which can be good if used right. In the case of learning note names, it’s purely a mental isolation and chunking exercise to get that info in the mind for putting to practical use in higher topics. It’s the same sort of thing with say picking exercises, where some difficult lick might involve a tricky rhythm and string jumps. Practice the rhythm in isolation, practice the string jumps in isolation, then pull them together and practice that, which might be a much easier time than trying to practice the difficult lick as a whole from the getgo. In the case of learning note names over the fretboard, we’re really practicing an isolated exercise of the larger task of learning to navigate the fretboard (our musical interface) for an easier time of learning and making music, along with learning intervals, triads, chords, arpeggios, scales.
Something I have seen repeatedly when poking around various discussions on improvising is to throw out theory and focus on transcribing and playing with a band. Essentially playing by ear. I think both theory and playing be ear are valuable, and each informs the other. But there needs to be goals for practicing anything and a balance among the topics being practiced.
More personally immediate to learning well the notes of the fretboard, I am doing it because not knowing the notes really well (as well as other aspects of theory) has been a hindrance to other topics of interest. And learning the notes on the fretboard isn’t a monumental task. It’s just putting in some work over enough time, thinking about whether what is being practiced is effective, and altering what is being practiced if needed. I think with the right approach, anyone could learn reasonably well the notes of the fretboard in under a month of 2-3 short sessions of 10-15 minutes per day.
Yep,
my key was
1 - black
3 - red
5 - green
7 - cyan
9/11/13 - pink
Back in the day I used to either duplicate the diagram with scale degrees, or add them along the bottom,
but having discovered those erasable pilot clicker pens in recent years,
I figured that was redundant and I could put all the info in one easily readable diagram
I think that would be good as a supplement to a drilling exercise, being closer to real-world recall of notes. I do think that getting familiar with note names in the first place is going to require some form of mechanical drilling though.
Also, I think that learning notes of the fretboard would be good before learning to site-read. And probably some drilling of notes on the staff too. Probably doing both by position would be good just ahead of learning positional pieces. Years ago I took classical guitar lessons for a short stint, and it was all site-reading to learn to play pieces. It did help some in learning notes, but my problem with it was that I would have pieces mechanically memorized in my hands before having learned notes on the fretboard well and notes on the staff well. I found out elsewhere years later that I should have been learning many more unfamiliar pieces to solve those problems, but that wasn’t in the curriculum of the teacher I had went to, who was using a small book of progressive classical pieces. He told me to just keep going over the same pieces and that the notes on the fretboard and staff would sink in more over time. It really didn’t.
Any way, I was thinking that some site-reading might be a good supplement to learning notes on the fretboard. Just another way to put it to use.
I figure whatever the physical movement [exploration, creativity, etc.] such as what goes on in the brain, is somewhat at odds with the ability to retain static images of technical data.
So no need to feel bad about taking a while to nail down the guitar fretboard layout imo which is designed to suit the hand more so than the mind.
Always having some new thang or musical piece or something to practice along with all you’re already doing keeps the ball rolling.
I just bit off ‘Just What I Needed’ [The Cars] and ‘Eye In The Sky’ [Alan Parsons Project] which has kept my interest in practice sky high; both those tracks have an opportunity to combine gtr chord chugging with keyboard lines if you’re up for a hard game with it.
I think BW mentioned the parallel with ‘Just What I Needed’ to Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling’
I hope to write something nearly as good as those someday.
I didn’t notice this mentioned in this great discussion on guitar playing, but has anyone looked into the benefits of learning a little about the CAGED system?
It’s not only a great tool for different chord voicing’s, but it’s also great for solo improv.
I’ve spent some time with it, very interesting concept, but the G and D shapes take some work and dexterity.
I came up with CAGED back in the early 80s ,
when I wrote out all the notes on the fretboard and realised there were 5 distinct patterns per hand position
Of course I didn’t name it or dispense/monetize it and good players already knew it I imagine
(Keith Allen apparently created it in 1975, unknown to me at the time)
The exact same thing tho, it’s pretty intuitive when you look at a named fretboard
There’s also 3-note-per-string patterns that utilize 2 fret jumps per finger,
and extended patterns that join 2 or 3 CAGED positions together.
There’s 5 CAGED type pentatonics also, plus the slidey extended versions that join them
I kinda think of the pentatonic as the skeleton scale underneath it all, and all the extra notes are valid too in context
Pentatonic shapes being like a bridge between chord tone arpeggios and the modal scales
Me, I’m trying to simplify shit now
Relate everything around 3 root chord shapes that cover the whole neck (A/E/C)
I like simple
Yeh I’m probably wrong about that comparison, it was Boston and someone, doesn’t matter.
Just What I Needed has some boogie riffing, Ultimate Guitar tabs [free version] have it wrong where they figure in the verses it’s whole power chord shifts when it’s really the Chuck Berry type riffing over the E, B, C#m chords on one of the guitars. It’s technically possible to play the keyboard part at the same time, in so called finger picking ‘claw’ style, it’s a bit tortuous though.
Same with Eye In The Sky, takes some initial figuring out but then is a matter of repetition training as always.
If you locate all the instances of one particular note on the fretboard it’s easy enough to visualise the CAGED chords around those. The G and E shapes each have three tonic notes, the rest have two.
I’ve known all the notes on the guitar for a long time now, I’ve been playing for 55 years!
Really goes with the territory of knowing the C, A and E form barre chords. i.e the ones Rob Bourassa has color coded as Red [E form] Yellow [C form] Blue [A form]
Those forms produce a lateral permutation of 1st, 3rd and 5th along each string.
E.g the ‘A’ form of C# is at the 4-6 fret position, the next form going higher along the neck is the ‘E’ form at the 9-11 fret position, and the ‘C’ form is at the 13-16 fret position.
Taking note of where a given string is fretted at each of those chord shapes produces a triad along that string. Which allows for quick visualisation for tapping licks based on the Major or minor triads.
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