Hey Friend,
I hope your Halloween fun was all you hoped it to be. While the kids scored big time in the candy department, we didn’t have a single trick or treater stop at the house!
Hmmm, what to do with all those extra goodies…? I think I see a sugar coma in my future… JK!
Let’s get back to the patterns.
Just like the major scale has a specific pattern of intervals we follow every time to get the correct notes, the same can be said for finger placement on the strings.
No matter where you start playing the notes of a major key, there will be two and three note patterns on each string you can teach your fingers to ensure you are hitting the correct notes that fit within that key.
Scales Put Me To Sleep...
Now let’s be clear - we don’t want to learn these patterns just for the sake of playing scales. If every song was a rendition of a scale, we’d only have a handful of songs and we’d be bored to tears with them!
No, the purpose for playing scales is to teach our fingers where the proper notes are on the fingerboard. It’s all for the muscle memorization.
There is a connection between the muscles in your hand and your brain, and while we’re not really conscious of the connection, the brain is always recording.
So as you learn patterns and your fingers begin memorizing shapes and runs, your brain is dialed in and recording what your fingers are doing. It’s also connecting the pitches your ears hear to the finger patterns and locations on the guitar neck.
Of course, it helps that you can see where on the fingerboard you’re putting your fingers, but it’s not as critical as the tactile and audible connections. People who are blind play guitar just fine, and it’s because the muscle memory guides their hands and fingers where they need to go.
There are repeatable patterns all over the neck.
Just think about this:
When you play an open E string on the sixth string, you know there will be another E note at the twelfth fret. The same goes for the A, D, G and B strings and their octaves.
But what about an E note on the A string? Or on the D string, for that matter?
Because of the way guitars are tuned (at least in standard tuning), there is a pattern for helping us locate (and memorize) where notes are on each string.
I’m not saying you’ll necessarily have to memorize every string, note by note (although that’s note a bad idea). But if you can remember where key notes are on a string, you’ll never get lost when you play melodies and riffs in different positions on the neck.
It'll also help you find interesting places to play chords in different positions.
We’ll look at some easy patterns tomorrow. Have a great one!
Peace~
Dave
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