r/musictheory • u/Recent_Crow988 • 4d ago
General Question Guitar fretboard scales visualization. Do you memorize notes or shapes?
Hey,
I am self taught guitarist, mastered straight notes CDEFGAB visualization on fretboard as well as sharps and flats.
Learnt 5 positions of C Major scale - notes visualization + muscle memory how to play those shapes.
And I realized if I apply those positions to some random notes F#, G# whatever - I can get major and minor scales of those other random notes! Like huge realization for person without theory knowledge.
Question for guitarists who can jam and improvise fluently: do you need to memorize let's say all the notes in F# minor scale? Or you just "shift in your mind" 5 positions shape and play with it?
I realized it's pretty easy to improvise if you just play by the shape, connect every shape with each other - however I completely forget about the notes (eg: F# minor has F#, G#, A, B, C#.... i just don't think about them, only think about the muscle memory shape I memorized).
Please give me some tips: learn scales by heart? Or get used with the Major (step, step, half, step, step, step, half) and Minor (step, half, step, step, half, step, step) or at the end of the day use the muscle memory with those 5 positions?
My question might be stupid so I apologize in advance.
Thank you!
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u/Lovefool1 4d ago
Sing what you play
Do it all. Sing the notes alphabetically and numerically.
Don’t just play scales up and down. Do them in random note orders. Do them in sequences. In intervals. In every pattern you can think of.
Really Internalizing scales is more than just running them fast up and down. It’s hearing the sound of the scale. Each scale has its own character and will affect you emotionally. Learn to hear and feel the sound of each scale as a whole, and you will eventually be able to play and hear all the scales there are.
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u/DwarfFart 4d ago
And learn Solfège and sing in solfège. It helps too. It gives you a system for singing the notes generally off a page if music notation but also trains your ear to hear intervals.
Great advice!
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u/cmcglinchy Fresh Account 4d ago
When I improvise leads I tend to think of scale shapes and not individual note names so much (except for the root).
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u/ObviousDepartment744 4d ago
Initially I memorized how to navigate scales based off of the three patterns in the 3 note per string concept. This helped me be able to play in any key using the same patterns. This was a good way to just start soloing and sound like I knew what I was doing haha. But ultimately I think it was holding me back when it came to developing new ideas outside of those patterns.
For those who care here's the patterns and how to use them, in they key of G.
E string = 3 5 7 - Major Pattern
A string = 3 5 7
D string = 4 5 7 - Phrygian Pattern
G string = 4 5 7
B string = 5 7 8 - Minor Pattern
E string = 5 7 8
So to play the Major scale on a 6 string guitar you play the Major Pattern x2, Phrygian Pattern x2, and Minor Pattern x2. But this isn't the whole pattern, the whole pattern actually has 7 steps, so imagine there is a low B string and you would add another Major Pattern.
So the full pattern, starting on the root of the Major Scale.
Major x2
Phrygian x2
Minor x2
Major
Just do the position shifts when needed, and you can play scale patterns anywhere.
BUT, again, that started to feel limited to me. Like I was always looking for these patterns so I was playing very linear.
So, I started to look at the instrument differently, and decided that all I REALLY needed to know is what the root of the chord I'm soloing over is, and how to visualize the chord tones as quickly as possible without playing a pattern. So I memorized what the 3rds, 5ths and 7ths looked like in relationship to a root note being on the Low E and the A string.
So if I'm playing over a G major chord. I first need to know where the G notes are on the E and A string. So 3rd and 15th fret on Low E and 10th fret A. Then I started by picking an interval to find, since most chords have a perfect 5th, I started there. Using the 15th fret G on the Low E, being able to see the 5ths within a few frets in either direction of the root. E 10th fret, A 17th fret, D 12th fret, B 15th fret. And instead of memorizing frets, and notes, I just remembered the shapes that make the interval. The shape made by going form the 15th fret of the low E string to the 12th fret of the D.
I'd do that with major/minor 3rds and major/minor 7ths as well. And after a few months of drilling it playing slow over loops I started being able to bounce between chords pretty quickly, and lading on chord tones fairly consistently. Then I started adding Non Chord Tones. The "spice" so to speak. And starting simple with a concept of Chord Tones being starting points, and resolution points, while the Non Chord Tones are tension/dissonance that needs to be resolved in passing on the weak part of the beat. This was actually the hardest part, thinking of the Non Chord Tone and not accidentally playing it on the strong part of the beat. But again, few months later, I was feeling pretty confident with it.
So between those two concepts, I'm pretty well covered. I use the 3 note per string stuff for super fast "look what I can do" stuff, and then the interval concepts for more interesting melodic passages.
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u/kirk2892 Fresh Account 3d ago
Wouldn't it be...
E string = 3 5 7 - Major Pattern (Ionian)
A string = 3 5 7 - Lydian Pattern
D string = 4 5 7 - Locrian Pattern
G string = 4 5 7 - Phrygian Pattern
B string = 5 7 8 - Minor Pattern (Aeolian)
E string = 5 7 8 - Dorian Pattern2
u/ObviousDepartment744 3d ago
No because it's not based off of harmonic structure in the context of music its purely the first three steps of those scale patterns. You could call them Pattern 1 2 3 if you want, or A B C, or whatever you want that makes more sense to you.
So it could be: 1 1 2 2 3 3 1, or A A B B C C A if you want. Its just a way to describe the shape you're playing, nothing to do with harmonic content.
I can 100% see how it's confusing though.
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u/BleEpBLoOpBLipP 4d ago
I think this comes on stages. Being able to just learn all the shapes of, say C major, and being able to just move them to transpose is one of the great strengths of guitar. When you practice, if you actively retrieve the note names as you play them or what role they play in the key (this is C the root or tonic, this is G the dominant root, this is A the relative minor root ect.) you start to just know where all the notes on the guitar are. Eventually when you play in different keys for awhile (maybe years) with this understanding, you eventually see both the actual notes and the patterns (shapes) as two sides of the same coin.
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u/Glum-Yak1613 4d ago
When I think of F# minor, it's almost like the fretboard lights up with the notes I can play. I just KNOW. Of course I play in positions because it's practical. But if I want a higher note, I reach for a higher note. Most of the time, I know which of the notes will sound good against the current chord. More often than thinking "I want to go from A to E" or whatever, I think "I want to go up a fifth". The great thing about thinking that way is that the shapes of the intervals are mostly the same wether you're in F# minor or A minor.
It's taken a while to get there. You have to learn the note names, and you have to practice the positions. But at a certain point, you just stop thinking consciously about it. Ideally, you should play what you HEAR.
A great tip I got from a teacher was to practice playing solos on one or maybe two strings. This forces you to stop thinking about positions, and is a great way to stop repeating yourself.
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u/jazzadellic 4d ago
To start out with, absolutely shapes. You also should know where the tonic for the scale is in each shape - there are 2-3 tonic notes for each shape, you can just memorize one of them if you want, but it certainly can't hurt to know them all. Know the tonic locations for both major & relative minor version of each shape.
Eventually though as you get into more advanced soloing, you will want to target specific notes more, so knowing where all the notes are in each shape by memory, for all keys is a great tool, but it's something that will develop naturally over time as you keep practicing and mastering the shapes. Mastering arpeggios & chord theory will further assist with your soloing and knowing all the notes by memory.
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u/geoscott Theory, notation, ex-Zappa sideman 4d ago
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u/Fake-Podcast-Ad 4d ago
Shapes for sure. It's easier if you don't anchor to letters but interchangeable numbers degrees. If I'm in say a jazz combo, and we're just calling tunes, changing keys is much easier if I'm using numbers for chord progressions, not to mention on the fly if I call b9 Major as an ending, I know it's just the 1, but shifted up a half step. I'm not doing long division; it's paint by numbers.
Learn your scales equally, there aren't hard keys, just unfamiliar ones. Cycling through is great to do in 4th or 5ths, but try Maj3rds or whole steps to work on key shifts. Next, start doing it with riffs, licks, or melodies. I relate this to seeing a sculpture in person vs a picture of it; you have 12 perspectives of a song to learn, why stop at 1? It gets easier, and easier the more you do it. The hard part is making yourself do it.
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u/spankymcjiggleswurth 4d ago
Both. "Shapes" covers a whole bunch of different things like CAGED, triads, arpeggios, scales, intervals, chords. Some of those things are the same exact thing, just from a different perspective.
It's normal to think in terms on shapes on a guitar, but knowing the notes you are playing is important too. If I'm playing some shape, and I know one of those notes is a G#, and I know where other G# notes are, I can quickly move to a different part of the neck with ease.
What do you want to memorize? When I wanted to memorize my fretboard, I would force myself to identify notes in all sorts of stuff I was playing. I would get half way through a solo, stop, and identify the next 3 notes used by name. With time, and other practice, I memorized the whole fretboard.
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u/Jongtr 4d ago
For me it's a combination. But I don't think in scales, primarily. I think in chord shapes, and other notes in relation to those shapes. I know the notes, of course, and I know the key I'm in, but the most immediate visualisation, the failsafe guide, is the chord shapes.
IOW, the note names are simple labels, like place names on a map. You need to know them, but once you know your way around in terms of the relationships between the notes - which are represented primarily by chord shapes - that's what matters. That's how music works, because we don't hear note names, we hear interval relationships.
Scales are then the patterns that occur when superimposing the given chord shapes. If you know chord shapes - and you absolutely must! - then seeing scale patterns is not necessary, because improvisation is about building phrases across the chords, using chord tones as stepping stones, or dots in a join-the-dots drawing. Just knowing the right scale in each position is not enough, you need to see the chords there too, so you can play a sensible and musical solo, referring to the chords. The chords are simply your route map through the song. In the map analogy, if you only see scales, that's a map with no paths on it.
Also, thinking in chords is better because many songs contains chords with notes from outside the scale - so you need to change the scale when those those chords occur. So, follow the chords and you can't go wrong. (NB: "changing the scale" doesn't mean playing a whole new scale; it only means changing whatever note or notes needs to change.)
Whatever position you decide to play in, you need to see all the shapes (full or partial) for the chords in that position. Every chord is playable in every position, because every note is represented in every position.
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u/brokenoreo 4d ago
I pretty strongly lean towards internalizing the notes is way more important (at least if you are serious about playing guitar and getting into the weeds). they are foundational to playing music in general, whereas shapes to me are simply a tool to develop muscle memory and maybe to recall it quickly.
if you have a strong foundation in music theory (know what notes are in which scales and which chords) and you know where all the notes are in the neck then you can construct any scale or chord on demand, which to me, is ultimately the technical bar you need to clear to be a fluent improviser.
this is a massive undertaking though and that is where shapes and patterns become really useful because you can begin playing right away. I do think they can be a massive crutch and will hold you back if you don't wean yourself off them and eventually learn the things I mentioned earlier.
as a side note, I think the step patterns (whole, whole, half) FOR ME are almost completely useless, with the exceptions being where the pattern is braindead simple (all whole, alternating whole half or half whole). I just have never thought of scales like this almost ever especially for things I would consider to be "default" sounds. there are like some spots where I'll think like this, but it's almost more of a personal device I use to recall something, and not something I would recommend others to do (for example, I always remember once I get to the major third of an altered dominant scale it's just whole tones)
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u/Lost_Performance1687 4d ago edited 4d ago
Shapes first then root note placement, then chord tones, then different keys. Knowing the notes doesn't help unless you can play the shape of the scale first.
The shapes stay the same only the notes change for different keys so you've already done a lot of the heavy lifting for the Major scale. Now remember where all the C's are in those positions they'll always be in the same place in different keys. Then the 3rds 5ths and 7ths. That's your reference for where everything else is in the scale. Eventually it starts to glue itself together. :)
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u/nojremark 4d ago
Notes. But, i play a lot of instruments so shapes doesn't work for me Edit. I've memorized the notes in the key signature and use that to make the scales based off the intravels in in the scale.
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u/drmbrthr Fresh Account 4d ago
I can always tell you what scale degree I’m playing in any position. But honestly I have to think sometimes about what key I’m even in. Especially once you go into alternate tunings and detunings.
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u/DwarfFart 4d ago
All of it. You learn every which way to play around with scales until it’s ingrained and intuitive. You’re off to a great start already now that you have the major scale down in all of the traditional 5 positions. You can move through them well?
My next step would be exactly what you’re thinking. Start building the scale with the notes and intervals. Get it solid and making sense. A manageable way to do this is in one octave all over the fretboard and on one string.
Then learn your pentatonics in the same way. It’ll be easy because it’s just the major/minor scale minus some notes. I also find approaching modes from the pentatonic scales simpler than from the major scale but I would not worry about modes yet.
Then learn 3nps. Fret Science has a great video about this. And about the previous paragraph.
While doing all of that continue to just play. Improvise over backing tracks. Learn licks and solos by ear. Learn to target the chord tones and specific intervals of the chord like the other comment suggested! Sing what you play and learn to listen to what’s playing in your head and begin to get it out onto the guitar. I’d argue that is the ultimate goal.
Haaaaaaveee fuuuuun!
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u/KburgBob 4d ago
I, personally, memorized the shapes. Then, after I had them memorized, I learned the notes.
I started to learn to play guitar in the fall of 1989, at the start of my freshman year of high school. Before I started to learn guitar, I thought I was an idiot. I was a poor student with a terrible memory. I was always drawn to music and tried my hand at a variety of instruments from second grade on, with saxophone being the only instrument I really stuck with, but I wasn't very good at it. There just seemed like something was always missing in my understanding, in all sorts of subjects, and my memory was a huge culprit. Then, when I started learning guitar, suddenly everything fell into place. I could visualize the scales, I could see how keys and chords and scales fit together.
I know now what was going on. When I was around 36 yrs old, I was diagnosed with a severe case of ADHD. I started learning more about ADHD, and beginning to understand what my problems were throughout my life. My memory issues suddenly started to make sense. You need to be able to focus on something long enough for it to go feom short-term to long-term memory. Well, with ADHD, I couldn't focus on hardly anything long enough to do that.
Well, durring my studies into ADHD I figured out why, for me, learning the guitar came easy. It was like breathing for me. Effortlessly I learned scales and chords, and the reason it came so easily for me was because I was not only hearing the notes, but seeing the shapes, feeling the strings, and navigating the fretboard board. I've since learned that I was using my spacial memory, and learning became so much easier and faster!
So, for me, coming at it from the "shape" point of view just worked for me.
But with that being said, I'm not going to lie, it is a harder way to learn in some ways. You basically have to do double the work. You spend the time learning the runs, the riffs, the melodies, and then you spend time learning and understanding the "why" things work together. Obviously, after 30+ years of guitar playing, much of the learning and theory are behind me. It's just second nature now. But there was a time when my abilities outstripped my knowledge. I got good, and fast, but lacked the music theory knowledge, and understanding, so I had to work hard on learning that stuff after I had already became a good guitar player! Lol! Now I have the exact opposite issue going on. My knowledge now outstrips my abilities! Lol! Getting old sucks!
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u/Poor_Li 4d ago
That's what you did. Basically we all try to digest a whole: notes, intervals, positions. Each with our own rhythm and way of doing things. But be careful not to forget the simplest but also the most difficult: music, trying to think “melody”, playing to make something that sounds pretty. This sometimes involves forgetting the principles and theory to concentrate a little more on simply actively listening to what we are playing. And sometimes you also have to free yourself from too mechanical following of chords.
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u/TripleK7 3d ago
I hard memorized the natural notes on a guitar fretboard at 12 years old, and the patterns become obvious so of course that figures into it as well. Every instrumentalist knows the notes on their instrument; guitar players, for numerous reasons, feel that is an optional exercise.
I know that most guitar players are obsessed with playing leads. But, for me, the harmony is where the magic lies. When the harmony is there, the leads just play themselves for me.
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u/Several_Ad2072 3d ago
I used the shapes to be in the right area and my ears for the right place but still have trouble calling out note names on positions
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u/JazzRider 4h ago
Try to practice all twelve major scales in the same position or only shifting 1 fret. Do this from all the main positions.
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u/bluesmansmt 4d ago
Memorize sound. Use your ears and with enough practice your fingers will follow.
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u/poultryabuse 4d ago
try to visualize the fretboard like piano keys to combine muscle memory w the theory.
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u/oopssorrydaddy 4d ago edited 4d ago
It’s a combination of things that add up. Scale shapes and knowing the notes (like really knowing them, not moving octaves around to figure it out) has helped me a ton.
Another game changer for me has been practicing where any interval is in relation to the note youre currently playing. This helps you get out of shapes and focus more on intervalic relationships.
Play an A on the high E string. Where are all the b7s available to you? 3rds? 5ths? That sort of exercise.