Guitar Fretboard Secrets Part 1

Based on Seven Modes -Part 1 Diagonal Approach

 

 

I am starting here a series of free guitar lessons that will help you to understand

and navigate the guitar fretboard in a better way so that you will be able to go anywhere and improvise in any key.

Through this you will gain here the freedom of expression and ability to create original solos,It can be really frustrating when you get stuck in one position of the guitar neck and can not come up with any new idea.( usually it is somewhere around the 5th fret of the neck) I know this pain really well as I have been there for too long....

(I found the way to overcome this problem through learning all seven major modes positions on the fretboard and then I tried to find as many possibilities

of linking them together as I could. One way of doing that I present below in the part one of this series - I hope it is going to work well for you)

 

 

I use this strategy in my own playing as well as in my teaching practice and I have

a large number of students that can confirm that this strategy works well. So if you just want to play the guitar using theory to make music instead of studying the subject in books, read on!

 

So this is how it works:

 

Step one:

 

If you know all seven modes using 3 note per strings patterns, you can now skip this step one. But if you are still not familiar with them I am afraid that you will have

to memorise all seven mode patterns first – I promise to you that this is not so difficult.(sign up now to download a free modes diagrams in pdf format now with my explanation how to do it quickly)

 

 

Step two:

 

Diagonal approach. You need to learn how to find octaves on the guitar.

 

See the diagram attached:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lets say you are on the 5th fret oh the E6 string – that is the note 'A', if you look diagonally at the 7th fret of the D4 String you will find your 'A 'note one octave higher, now look diagonally at the 10th fret of the B2 String that is your 'A' note an octave higher from the previous 'A'

 

 

Step three:

 

Look at the diagram, what you can see is six notes on two adjacent strings repeated

in three different octaves. Each octave for the sake of navigation belongs to different mode, So the first six notes Start in Aeolian Mode, then the same 6 notes but octave higher in Locrian Mode and finally the last six in Ionian Mode.

 

( fretboard diagram no 2 -numbers inside red dots refer to left hand fingers)#

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now lets look up at the TAB:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some possibilities:

the first one sounds quite neoclassical but you can play it over anything in A minor and C Major

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's another one more - a common neoclassical sequence:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the final one. What I have done is I play initial six notes of the first mode, then play the last three notes of the first mode together with the first two of the new one. Practically if you understand modes – I constantly repeat

the same six notes in different variations in 3 different octaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I use here the modes purely for the purpose of navigation as opposed to finding different exotic feel as they are for, so whenever I name each mode please be aware that I do it only to tell you where we are at the moment on the fretboard.

 

 

I do recommend trying to apply these licks over some backing tracks in the key

of A minor C Major to start with. If you don't have any backing tracks go to free resources section of www.guitarlessoninwimbledon.co.uk to download them now.

Once you feel more comfortable in one key try to transpose it to another one

by shifting the root note of the pattern up or down the neck.