Half-Step = 1 Frett
Whole-Step = 2 Fretts
Here is a short video that should make this clear:
Fast Tube by Casper
That’s really all there is to that. Now we’re ready to begin getting into building scales.
Related Theory Posts
Next Up, The Major Scale
Archive for the ‘Guitar Playing’ Category
The Five Boxes
01
Dec
This lesson will introduce you to “The Five Boxes”. If you really want to follow along with my method of applying Music Theory to the guitar you will have to memorize these boxes thoroughly. Everything I have to say about learning scales and harmonizing involves learning how to move these boxes around the guitar.
Note: When learning these boxes it is important that you finger the patterns correctly. I have labeled the correct finger numbers on each of the notes of the boxes to help you get this down. Refer to this chart to see what finger numbers correspond to which fingers:
Let’s get started. Here are each of the Boxes listed in order with the proper fingerings indicated:
Here is a video that shows you how they look on a guitar:
Fast Tube by Casper
Remember, everything I will have to say about learning scales and harmonizing involves learning how to move these boxes around the guitar, so you will have to commit them to memory before you can really go any further.
So go slow, take them one at a time and get them under your fingers. What you’re shooting for here is to be able to play any of the boxes from any position on the guitar without having to really think about them. For example, if I say play me Box 3 starting from the 4th fret on the low E-string, you should be able to quickly put your 1st finger on the 4th fret of the low E-string and bang out Box 3 without hesitation. This applies to all of the boxes.
In the next lesson, we are going to learn how these boxes interlock to form a “Master Pattern”. Before we can do that, your fingers need to have these five patterns memorized.
How the five boxes interlock
10
Nov
So now that we have memorized the five boxes, it’s time to see how they fit together to form a “Master Pattern”. This is the step that will take you the longest to really get down, but I promise the effort will be well worth it. The five boxes are really just a shortcut to help you get your head and fingers around the “Master Pattern”. Its this master pattern that we are going to be moving up and down the neck when we talk about building scales. And it’s this master pattern that you should be striving to see when you look at your guitar neck. Here is a graphic that shows you the five boxes interlocked into the master pattern. Remember, your real goal here is to no longer see five individual boxes, but to see this:
Since this can be confusing at first, here’s a video that will really make this all very clear:
Fast Tube by Casper
I can tell you that when I was first learning these, learning to see the Master Pattern took the longest. I’m seriously talking about months and months of working them into my fingers. While I was trying to get them burned into my brain, I came up with all sorts of little exercises to help. In the next lesson, I’m going to post some of these exercises. Do spend some time working them as I suggest. It will cut down significantly on the time it takes to get this down.
Again, I promise that all this effort will pay off. Once you have this Master Pattern down, your basically done learning patterns and fingerings. Then we can move on to learning how this one pattern contains all your scales and modes in every key and, more importantly, showing you how to use them to fast track your journey into learning Music Theory.
