The guitar fretboard MAP

you can Master the guitar much faster than you might think and whether you've been playing for three days or 30 years this video will help to clarify exactly how the notes are laid out whether you're right-handed or left-handed so you can easily navigate the fretboard using the inherent geometry of music to play scales and modes and chords so you can play any song you want or write your own music basically by the end of this video you'll gain a kind of x-ray vision into music theory and we're going to do it in less than 13 minutes so let's go alright so to begin the point to keep in mind is that you don't have to memorize a bunch of finger positions you see most people think of the guitar the way they picture it is to see it as a big grid of dots where these dots represent notes or finger positions up and down the fretboard if you press these notes for example it's the c major scale and this is the same pattern in a different octave or to play chords you press other dots moving your fingers to play each group with the idea that if you practice enough if you can develop the muscle memory needed to become a good player the only trouble is you don't really learn this way it's just rote your muscles remember what to do but your mind doesn't get a clear picture of why these patterns work the way they do which is really necessary for good songwriting these dots don't paint a clear picture of what you're playing because they're really more like Braille than a vivid image of the underlying patterns of Music Theory so to bring these patterns a little more into Focus instead of using uniform black dots to represent the notes let's label each with its letter name like this on the low E string for example the letters rise up the Frets in half step intervals the open string is e the first fret is f then a half step above that on the second fret is g flat then G on the third fret and so on up the string and on all of the other strings the notes are laid out in a similar way with the notes rising up the strings in half step intervals now with each note labeled with its own letter name like this we're a step closer to cracking the code of the guitar fretboard closer than we were with only a bunch of black dots to work with because now with these letter names each note is distinct which helps to pick out the logic of this pattern like the fact that each string is really just a chromatic scale or the 12 basic notes of Music rising in half step intervals like this on the fretboard where the same pattern is repeated on the various strings which is insightful and gets us a step closer like I say to mastering the fretboard only it's still hard to really see what we're looking at to really understand the significance of these patterns since these letter symbols are a little overwhelming this image is still sort of visually chaotic so let's take a quick closer look at these notes of the chromatic scale to see the special relationships between them that will help to clarify what's actually happening on the fretboard so these 12 notes of the chromatic scale this is the most basic set of pitches in music and really the mother of all note patterns because everything from scales and modes to chords and progressions they all arise from these 12 notes just by playing different interval patterns in other words no one really plays the chromatic scale itself because it doesn't sound very Musical on its own instead musicians pick and choose smaller groups of notes from this pattern to play things that sound more Musical and by far the most popular and important pattern derived from the chromatic scale is the major scale like this C major scale formed from a sequence of whole step and half step intervals unlike the chromatic scale which sounds sort of plain and aimless the major scale is better on the ears it has a more definite feeling of movement and Direction where it establishes a tonal center of gravity around one of the notes which in the case of C major is the C note whether you're rising up to this high C or falling down to this low overseas this major scale pattern of whole step and half step intervals creates the sense that either of these C notes on the bookends are the tonal destination it sounds like home so the major scale is powerful in this way and the way that it creates an audible sense of meaning or context within the notes is key to understanding the fretboard but it gets even better because this special pattern of whole steps and half steps in the major scale leads to the next most important pattern in music called the circle of fifths which really helps to explain the guitar and this is how it works let's take the c major scale c d e f g a b c and notice how we can split the interval pattern in half so we get whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step or intervals one two three four five six seven eight well if we start on the second half of this pattern on the G note of the c major scale or interval five and we repeat the same pattern of whole whole half whole whole whole half we get another major scale [Music] this time the G Major scale that begins on G where the G note is now the tonal Center of this scale or in this key the key of G and if we repeat this same process splitting the G Major scale in half starting on its fifth note D and play the same interval pattern of one two three four five six seven eight we get the D major scale which is awesome and by going through each scale this way starting on the second half of each respective pattern to form a new scale the sequence of starting on each fifth note of the previous scale eventually Cycles through all 12 Keys forming one big loop of overlapping scales that we call the circle of fifths now all of this is leading directly to your Mastery of the guitar fretboard so check this out the circle of fifths is important because just as the major scale animates the chromatic scale by injecting movement and meaning into the notes the circle of fifths is basically the major scale on steroids so compared to the spark of musical energy created by the major scale of any key the circle of fifths is more like an electrical Powerhouse of music relationships that lights up and connects all 12 Keys into one big super pattern though again with all of these letter symbols for notes it's a lot to take in to clearly see how all of the major scales in this pattern overlap and intertwine so to picture these relationships more directly it helps to instead represent each key in the circle of fifths as a color in the color wheel so for example you can see how the key of G red orange is equal parts C red and D orange and how D orange is equal halves g red orange and a orange yellow Etc in the same consistent way all around the circle all of the colors bleed seamlessly into one another just as all of the keys overlap in music so now we have a more intuitive view of the notes not relying on uniform black dots to picture them or the standard letter names for notes but using colors that actually convey how they're all related in music and not only the relationships between neighboring keys but also the relationships between all of the notes because the same symmetrical patterns between between colors also happen to highlight the same symmetrical connections between the notes in music color and music Follow the same patterns it's just that one is visible while the other is audible but like two languages that tell the same story they are essentially one but how does this all apply to the guitar fretboard clearly these three patterns are connected the chromatic scale the major scale and the circle of fifths but how does any of this help you play the guitar here's how now that you can actually see the 12 notes of music using color in the circle of fifths all you have to do is rearrange them through a simple rotation back into the chromatic scale again and we're back to where we started only now all of the relationships between notes the otherwise invisible connections between them are baked into the colors so the chromatic scale is now also brimming with musical energy so now you can literally see the connection between the chromatic scale the mother of all note patterns and the circle of fifths which explains how all of the keys and notes are related in music which is where the guitar fretboard comes in because the fretboard as a turns out sits at the intersection of these two patterns since each string on the guitar is really just a chromatic scale where the notes on each string rise in half step intervals up the Frets and the notes on each fret rise in a circle of fifths pattern in other words if you see the fretboard as one big grid of notes all of the rows the strings are chromatic scales while all of the columns the Frets are the circle of fifths and this is because of how the guitar is tuned with each open string above its respective fifth note except for a slight shift in the pattern between strings two and three which staggers the chromatic scales on each string in a way that causes them to align like this and within this perfectly organized Matrix of notes the geometry of relationships between colors between the notes informs how to play everything on the fretboard like all of the scales in every key and the chords that are built from these scales including all of the chord inversions that you see in the Caged chord system which I explain in another video and of course all chord progressions in any key and mode since all of these patterns scales modes chords and progressions are all built upon this underlying framework of notes which is basically an interlaced Matrix of the chromatic scale and the circle of fifths so you can always revert the old days of black and white to Simply memorize where to place your fingers or you can try to picture these patterns using the letter names for notes getting lost in the alphabetical clutter or you can use the natural patterns of sight color to see the underlying patterns of sound music to really understand how the guitar fretboard is laid out so you can easily navigate as you play this is music theory by definition which means to see sound Theory comes from the Greek theoria which means to look at view or see so music theory means to see sound so now you see it now you don't you can blindly grow up in the dark using muscle memory or you can actually see what you're doing to make music and once you really understand and can see that the fretboard is just this interlaced pattern of the chromatic scale and the circle of fifths combined you can really play anything and I have different playlists that dive into how to navigate these patterns on the guitar but just to show you some examples here are some patterns on the fretboard I've flipped the guitar upside down here so it's the perspective of when you're holding the instrument looking at the fretboard and again each string is a chromatic scale while every fret follows the circle of fifths which explains why the c major scale for example looks like this on the fretboard splitting the scale into segments across multiple strings the sequence is c d e f g a b c or up an octave it's c d e f g a b c where this C note is directly above its fifth note G on the string below while at the same time C is also below F it's other neighbor in the circle of fifths only over an upper fret because of the shift in the pattern of these top two strings and because each Octave of a note is the same color you can quickly find any note anywhere on the fretboard so it's easy to play any C note for example whether it is here or here or here here here or here or here and the same goes for any of the notes whether it's G or E flat Etc and since the underlying framework of notes is consistent across the fretboard you can also play scales in any key and octave so like this G Major scale or this E minor scale or really any scale and mode on the fretboard of course it's about more than just finding each note on the fretboard it's also about seeing how and why all of the notes are related which the colors show because the relationships between them are baked in and just like the scales the same goes for any chord on the guitar since each chord is derived from a scale which is informed by the same consistent Matrix of notes like the c major chord made from notes c e and G and no matter what the chord is whether it's D minor for example or E minor or F major [Music] Etc obviously we're moving a little fast here and scratching only the surface but like I say these colors explain every possible pattern on the guitar whether you're right-handed so playing a fretboard like this or left-handed since the same patterns apply only in reverse patterns that are otherwise hiding in plain sight and once you can see them you really can't unsee them in the video notes there's a link to a PDF with all of these diagrams and in the community there are lots and lots of videos and diagrams that dive into all of this a lot further so you can check that out if you want hopefully this was helpful and if so please let the algorithm know and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Mike George

Views: 787,424

Keywords: music theory, guitar, learn guitar, songwriting, colormusic, scale degrees, intervals, patterns, color wheel, geometry, key, circle of fifths, music, learn to play, music lesson, guitar lesson, piano theory, guitar theory, chromatic scale, notes, chords, progressions, sacred geometry, CAGED chords, fretboard, guitar chords, guitar chords for beginners, caged system for guitar, guitar scales, chords on guitar, guitar basics, guitar class, how to learn guitar chords for beginners

Id: VwSBtuWkhiA

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2022