NEVER GET LOST on the fretboard again!

so let's say you go to your latest jam session with your friends or in a club and someone calls a tune in a key that you're not used to playing in while you start your solo you pick your minor pentatonic shape you're playing away you're sounding pretty good but then after a couple bars you play a wrong note you panic a little and then ah there's another wrong note and you look down at the fretboard and you look at it and you think why does this all of a sudden look like a map to a foreign country I've never been in and then you're real done for I'm going to show you how that will never happen again with these strategies that I teach to all my students every time you look down at the fretboard you'll know exactly where you are and you'll never get lost again [Music] easy shape [Applause] up to extension shape [Music] now a lot of students ask me should I just memorize the entire fretboard and yes one day you should but actually that's not necessarily the information that I'm using to prevent myself from getting lost on the fretboard the main information I'm using are just the notes on the low E and the a string I use those notes as landmarks when I'm looking for my pentatonic shapes when I'm playing in my pentatonic shapes so that I will never get lost as long as I keep in my mind wherever the significant roots or those landmarks are on either of those two strings I know the shapes every shape from there so if you've been playing guitar for a little while I'm sure you've encountered what I call the easy shape of minor pentatonic if we're in a minor pentatonic the root is going to be a at the fifth fret of your E string right and then we would just have easy shape now you're probably not getting lost in Easy shape because you know that the root of that shape is there you probably know that because it's probably the first one you ever learned but what if you start moving around the fretboard if you start moving around the fretboard you still never want to lose sight of that a so for example what if I slide up into the extension shape the extension shape is this little bit [Music] up here I'm still not going to lose my place because I know I keep in my mind this a down here or what if I'm in a different key right let's say I'm in c minor pentatonic there's my C on the root E I have my easy shape [Music] and my extension [Music] I'm just always visualizing that c root and never want to lose track of that c root in between those dots and I can see from there the easy shape and the extension shape above that let's go back to a minor pentatonic for a second and let's move below our easy shape if we move below our easy shape we are in what I call the symmetrical shape sometimes people call this shape five whatever you want to call it doesn't matter it looks like this [Music] and some people will call this the pentatonic equator because when you look here across the fifth fret you get in those shapes you get Fifth Fifth Fifth Fifth Fifth all the way across and again never lose sight of your root and in this case in these shapes you're never going to lose sight of your pentatonic equator and when we're in a we know that's fifth fret so I have symmetrical shape [Music] easy shirt [Music] and there's my root extension shape I might be way up here but I know it in relation to the A and that's still held in my mind right I can even go down to shape five but I know there's my root let's do that and see everything moves up keep in mind now the a or the C sorry is eighth fret now here's symmetrical shape five [Music] there's my equator [Music] in C right I'm visualizing that's the eighth fret and I keep in mind that in C I'm not on the dots right my root and my equator is not on the dot there's something funny about those dots and it always wants to draw our fingers towards the dots so when we're playing in the key of C we keep in mind that that equator is between those dots if you have spent the time to memorize the notes on the low E really well you will not lose sight of that c if you find that you are you are losing sight of that c that means you need to spend more time getting to know what that guy looks like and this sounds funny but I know all these notes based on the way they look it's not that different than if you meet someone for the first time you sort of take a mental picture of their face you know they look like this like this person has blue eyes and he's got kind of curly bushy hair well C has a face as well right his face looks like this he's in between the dots he's quite a ways up there he's right next to B right because there's nobody in the middle there and he's getting close to the 12th fret but he's in between the dots that's what his face looks like and that's why I will never forget what C looks like there or any of these notes on the whole fretboard now before we take the next step I'm just going to remind you that I put all the tabs and exercises on my website which you can download the website is www.blumars.com but the specific link is down below now one of the things that I said early on in this video is that we really need to know the notes on both the low E and the a string and that's where we're going to get our landmarks from also from the a string why because we don't always want to be stuck playing around this easy shape as good as it is right so many classic rock solos and blue souls are based on the easy shape but inserting keys easy shape might get a little too high pitched or just higher pitch than we might want for that particular song so let's say we're going to play now in the key of E but we want to be sort of in the middle of the fretboard because we just like that range for that particular song that means we need to know immediately where e is on the a string and now we're going to use an A String landmark seventh fret of the a string is e right and that means that I have a different set of pentatonic shapes that I'm going to memorize if you don't know these shapes yet that's okay don't panic you can memorize them in time you can memorize them after this video or just take each uh new shape one by one get used to each shape rather than trying to memorize them all at once which can be a little overwhelming and often means that you don't it doesn't really sink in right but here's that shape I call this one the funny B string shape why because we have to when we get to the B string in this shape we have to pitch it up one fret so it goes like this [Music] and now we remember that the landmark is on the a string and we are not going to lose sight of that even if I'm playing up here I'm always in the back of my mind I'm thinking about that e landmark and now we know that when the root is on the a string and my first finger is on the a string it's funny B string shape remember that that's a bit of a mouthful but if you can internalize that concept that when the root is on the a string and your first finger is starting that shape it's funny B string shape [Music] also it helps us to remember where the root is because we want to know where the roots are when we're improvising so that we're not Meandering so much we want to know where the roots are and maybe one day where more of the roots are and maybe one day where the thirds are and the fifths are but one thing at a time get to know where those roots are now let's go below right when we had the easy shape we had the equator we don't have the straight line equator with these ones but it doesn't matter it's not that much harder to memorize whatever we're gonna think of this one this is still going to be my Landmark but now my Landmark I'm going to put my third finger on the landmark so I'm still starting on the exact same note but because I'm starting below it in this system the shape is going to be different the shape is [Music] so notice that this system shares the same route in the same place it's just a matter of whether or not we start with our first finger on it and then play funny B string shape or start with our third finger on it and play this shape shape three I think most people call that and really the same thing happened when we were in our easy shape when we're in our easy shape we started with our first finger on the landmark or we started with our third finger on the landmark you could think of these as two entirely different systems depending on where we want to be on the fretboard either it's Landmark on the E string or its Landmark on the a string so let's do Landmark on the E string in the key of E well I have to find e on the 12th fret that's e of course it is it's an E string and I can play easy shape from there [Music] and I'm going to use that same Landmark but I'm going to put my third finger on it and that's where we can see that pentatonic equator [Music] we keep in mind these two pentatonic shapes and we keep in mind that they are both connected to that Landmark now let's change to the other system the other system is Landmark root on the a string we're staying in E so remember e is seventh fret of the a string you know that because you've studied these two strings really well right first finger on that e and we have funny B string shape [Music] then I'm going to use the same Landmark but I'm going to put third finger on that landmark and then I get what you people usually call shape three [Music] that the root is not at the bottom of this shape these are just extra notes but that the root is there a string seventh fret because that's the landmark for these two shapes but we can run from one to the other to the other and this is a very common what I call a run because it means we're going to slide through multiple shapes and this run is in many many many songs so we're gonna memorize it and we're gonna keep in mind our Landmark root but we're in a now and we're going to run three five three five slide that puts me into my a minor pentatonic easy shape and then we're gonna go five seven five seven slide that puts me into my a minor pentatonic extension shape we'll finish it off with 8 10 8 10. [Music] descent [Music] remembering that Landmark root is there on the fifth fret now we've got a nice run we've got a lot of space that we can travel [Music] but we want to also be able to do that kind of travel if we're in the other system the other system meaning Landmark root on the a string so let's change Keys let's change back to the key of E now you might be thinking oh why does he keep changing keys this is making it difficult but that's the point is that we want to be able to play minor pentatonic Mage pentatonic as well in every key because unfortunately not every song is in the key of A so here we go E minor pentatonic we know because we've studied the E and the a strings and we know that the E root is here at the seventh fret and we have memorized that when we have Landmark on a string we have funny B string shape [Music] and if we put third finger on that same Landmark we have shape three [Music] and those two are connected by that root which means that we can run from one to the other and usually I'll do the run like this I'll go five seven five seven five seven I might as well use those six notes of that shape because it's so easy to play three strings same shape in a row love it and then I'm going to slide right and then I'm going to apply seven nine and I'm going to apply I'm just going to play right through this to the end of top of that shape so we have [Music] and now I want one more note because if I just go one more note I have the root again so all I have to do to complete the whole run is just move up two Frets one whole step [Music] [Applause] nice [Music] so now I have a run that travels all the way from a to the fifth fret all the way to e at the 12th fret and your final step your final challenge here is that we can connect this whole system with the other whole system based on the E string root because watch what happens when we get to the top of this run [Music] where am I well I'm on the route here which means that this same fret right bottom string that's my landmark that's my Landmark for the other whole system so I'm here I'm visualizing because we're always visualizing where these landmarks are on the ENA strings even if we're not playing them and I see that's my Landmark so therefore I could move up into easy shape [Music] or I could have just stayed there with my third finger on that e and descent symmetrical shape [Music] so let's do the whole run and then descend symmetrical shape [Music] smash goal ending on E because we know that's the landmark for E just as that was the landmark for e on the a string let's do one more I'm going to do the same run but instead of descending symmetrical shape I'm going to go up to easy shape it's actually going to be a little easier so why not [Music] [Applause] [Music] there we go now we have traveled all the way from this a at the fifth fret all the way up to this G at the 15th fret so we have a lot of ability to travel I could have traveled even further because once I'm in this other system [Music] I also know that I have my extension shape up there [Music] easy shape [Applause] up to extension shape [Music] [Applause] wow so if you've enjoyed this video please subscribe it will help me out a lot and please comment below let me know if you find this useful or if you've got any other ideas that you have found useful for finding your way around the fretboard and never getting lost my name is blue Morris and I teach guitar lessons here in Vancouver Canada I'll see you next week

Channel: GuitarLessonsVancouver

Views: 79,489

Keywords: guitar fretboard, fretboard theory, guitar lesson, guitar theory, guitar soloing, guitar solo, electric guitar, guitar lessons, guitar lessons for beginners, blues guitar, classic rock guitar, minor pentatonic, guitar fretboard memorization, how to learn all the notes on a guitar fretboard, notes on guitar fretboard

Id: HwsZj5TIuy0

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023