The importance of “visualization” on the guitar fretboard: a systematic approach
Hi All!
After years of teaching, in contact with many students and colleagues, years of studying and researching, always by focusing on the “state of art” in the field of modern guitar education, I follow (and suggest to my students) a simple basic rule that works very well when one approaches the study of guitar.
Certainly I’m not here to re-invent the wheel and I’m aware that what I’m going to say is pretty clear and normal for many readers, both students or educators, however I’ve found that a vaste majority of students does not apply it in a systematic way, so that they confuse often different things while studying.
What is this basic “golden rule”?
When approaching any kind of guitar study one have to BE AWARE to separate the study of THEORY CONCEPTS from their related GUITAR FRETBOARD VISUALIZATION!
Those two are totally distinct aspects (and phases) of the guitar learning process and this because of the inner nature of the instrument.
Unlike the piano, that has a linear and mono-dimensional geometric arrangement of the notes on the keyboard, guitar has a two dimensional geometric arrangement of the notes on the fretboard. So that guitarists lose that easy-to-visualize correspondence existing between note positioning as we have learned it from theory and note positioning on the piano keyboard. This implies that, compared to piano players, we have to do some additional work.
I’ve too many times found students with a very good theory knowledge having problems to apply it while playing or improvising.
Why?
Because of a shallow knowledge of the guitar fretboard: it is necessary to approach the fretboard study in a more systematic way.
This comes by studying theory structures (scales, arpeggios, chords) isolating them on each single dimension, the vertical and the horizontal one first, and then in a combination of the two.
By using an engineering language we can say that we have to apply some CONSTRAINTS when we investigate the fretboard in order to place some structures on it.
No matter how our level is… it’s only a matter of approach!
An example can better clarify what I mean.
By visualizing a C major triad on the piano we can easily notice that the note positioning we visualize is the same we have learned from theory: a C note followed by an E and a G.
To investigate about the C major triad positioning on the guitar we have to study it by focusing on the two single dimensions first and then in all the possible combinations of the two. So that we have to visualize any structure by:
1) limiting the vertical dimension using the “string set” concept
2) limiting the horizontal one using the “vertical position” concept
3) using combinations of the two dimensions applying, for example, a “notes-per-strings distribution” concept that allows us to find innumerable oblique shapes on the fretboard corresponding to the same given structure.
Although we can find a lot of educational material (books, methods, etc) about theory, it is under everyone’s eyes the lack of educational contents about a fretboard visualization systematic approach!
By summarizing, if I’m going to study any structure (scales, chords or arpeggios) or harmonic concept (relations between structures) on the guitar I will follow a “fretboard constraint approach” as follows:
1) I will study theoretically structures such as scales, arpeggios, chords first
2) then I will study how to place them on the guitar fretboard by using the previous discussed “fretboard constraints” approach
This is definitely one of the main concepts that has led me to conceive my guitarLayers app that helps me a lot to reduce the fretboard learning curve and gives me the opportunity to spend this saved time by playing more music…
Be aware of all that said can help us as much as be aware of the fact that music, fortunately, has no much to do with the simple knowledge of the rules and the instrument… 😉
OK! It’s enough for now…
See you for my next post on another guitar learning approach I follow in order to meet the inner dynamic nature of the music.
Stay tuned!
Bye bye
January 21, 2017 @ 5:23 pm
Ciao Giuseppe!
I’m using the app on a daily basis and beside the fact that it’s an incredible and useful tool, I believe that the most interesting thing is the following one.
Going deeply into some of the app possibilities, such as using Layers to show two or more related fingerboards at the same time within a group (see video tutorials), I got happily ‘lost’ !! I began to explore with many layers on one fretboard or, sometimes I used too many fretboards just for one chord each ,… Thus I stopped messing around and a question came to me: Beside all these endless possibilities, what’s the most efficient and clear way to visualize this material on guitar for ME? The app is creating a problem that needs to be solved by ME! Suddenly I became aware that the real limit of this machine is…MY limit!
With Guitarlayers I feel that going through this problem/solving process we can extend the reach and transform the nature of our visualizations and conceptualizations.
At the same time we need to be careful to not fall in the trap/cage of possibilities by keeping the focus on our musical goal. That’s what Guitarlayers is all about for me.
January 22, 2017 @ 2:44 am
Ciao Fabrizio,
I totally agree with you and the same happened to me the first period I used guitarLayers.
The results that the app can provide are almost endless because of the “combinatorial” nature of both the guitar and the music elements (the note sets). GuitarLayers helps to find and visualize structures shapes and relations among them on the guitar quickly and helps to perform that kind of exploration work that thousand of guitarists do (and have done) by hand, with pencil and paper or simply by years of playing. This consistent “time facility” that the machine provides overcomes dramatically our natural human metabolization time and limited memory capability so that, at a glance, this can confuse us a bit.
But you have revealed the trick:
we don’t have to try to follow the machine in its unbelievable algorithmic but aseptic power… we have just to use it in order to meet our needs and our needs are mainly musical needs.
My “rule of thumb” is to choice, among all the software results, the ones that meets my taste, my hand confort, my memory capability, etc etc…
All that said, I use also the software to show my students how works my mind while I’m playing and this is an incredible facility in the classroom.
Anyway, thanks for your feedback Fabrizio, I hope to hear again from you!
Ciao
January 22, 2017 @ 9:06 am
Sure Giuseppe! Keep the great work up and looking forward to the next development of this precious app!
Ciao!