learn the fretboard?
Michael Olcsvary
to or not. It takes a long time, but sooner or later, you'll find yourself
hearing/looking at/feeling the note you're playing and saying "Hey! That's
a B flat!" One thing that helped me when my teacher showed me the minor
pentatonic scale at the fifth fret and had me find those notes everywhere
else on the neck; we did the same thing with the major and minor scales,
too.
The challenge is somehow integrating this "hard" knowledge with the heat of
the moment. This is easier said than done and only happens with a lot of
practice. I recommend the "Backtrack" columns in Guitar Player's last few
issues as an excellent introduction in learning how to fit scales to a chord
progression, along with practicing to records and your own recorded
progressions, and lots of late night jams with friends when you all forget
what key you're in. Just keep at it.
Michael
EPiekarski
scale patterns in all positions is a great help. If you take the patterns
that you already know, you can figure out what note you are playing.
It's not that important to know (at least right now) what note exactly that
you are playing. It is much more important that you know what tone you are
playing in relation to the key of the song. For example, if you know where
the minor third is when you play in the key of E, then you already know
where the G is.
All it takes is time and good practice, really.
EP
Southpaw <za...@weezle.com> wrote in message
news:uj8gisc8k0veujcv9...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 21 May 2000 13:04:41 GMT, Rick_...@hotmail.com (Rick M.)
> wrote:
>
> >Hey all,
> >
> >I've been playing for almost two years now and I can play quite a
> >few songs from tab or crd files. What I have not become very
> >good at is improvising or actually knowing what I'm playing. I
> >know some scales and chord theory, but it really isn't of much
> >use when all you're doing is memorizing patterns/positions. I've
> >read on quite a few sites that learning the fretboard helps.
> >
> >Will it help me?
> >
> >How do I go about it? Just learn where all the whole notes are
> >located on the first twelve frets? If anyone else has done this
> >can he tell me how long it took him to learn this and if it's
> >been of much use...
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >R.
>
> Its a lifelong endeavor and won't hapen overnight. At times I wonder
> about it myself when I think about how I began playing. My response
> is usually, "Are you SURE you want to learn the guitar??"
>
> I learned mostly chording and strumming for the larger part of my
> guitar playing experience. I tried all kinds of different angles to
> improvising and found that the best way is to just use your ears. I
> know it sounds kind of obvious, but getting familiar with your
> fretboard has to be imprinted into your very being.
>
> There are ways to do it by "looking" at the pentatonic "boxes" etc.
> and responding with them when a certain chord is played, but it ends
> up being so mechanical. You might pick up a few riffs etc. but they
> tend to wear thin after all the repetition.
>
> What we all are looking for is what I call "unique expression" or
> otherwise known as "improvising" to a piece of music. Try closing
> your eyes and fitting your notes in by ear. You will feel like a
> blind man stumbling around in a traffic jam at first but eventually
> you will be able to sort out what sounds nice and what doesn't.