Guitar Fretboard Crash Course

2. The Horizontal

Next, we're going to use the major scale to move horizontally up the fretboard.

Why the major scale?
Because it's the basis for everything in western music nowadays, which had its own evolution from the modes used in the Renaissance (but that's a whole other story).

First, a little refresher of the "formula" of the major scale:
Whole step - Whole step - Half step - Whole step - Whole step - Whole step - Half step
C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Si - Do

• A whole step = 2 frets on the fretboard
• A half step = 1 fret

Here's what that looks like on the 2nd string:

Next, we'll play the major scale horizontally across all six strings.
You can flip through the strings below:

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One thing we can note is that the major scale consists of two "tetrachords" (basically a four-note scale segment).
One starts on C, the other on G. Some may say this is "the key" to the major scale on the fretboard, because it's a symmetrical shape, but it creates a diagonal shape across the fretboard.
The guitar works with positions and diagonal shapes don't stay within one position. That's also why we're not going to be using a strict 3-note-per-string fingering as the basis of our practice, but a variant of it (but I'm getting ahead of myself).
It's more an interesting thing to notice than a real "hack" to unlock the fretboard.

3. The Vertical

If we filter out all of the C notes, we get these octave patterns:

Have a scroll through the different octave shapes below:

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Your root is the most important note; it's your anchor. It's the relation between the root and all the other notes that will determine the resulting sonority; everything is in relation to the root (unless you're playing atonal 12-tone rows).
The better you can find and see your root notes, the more freedom, command and insight you'll have over the fretboard.

4. Navigating The Matrix

Left, Down, Right

This little concept will make your thinking (and by extension your practicing) very organized and very clear.

After every root, we have 3 general directions in which the rest of the arpeggio/scale goes.
We can continue “behind” the note (Left), “on” the note (Down) or “after” the note (Right).
Every single possibility is contained within these 3 directions and once you have these core principles down, you’ll never get lost on the fretboard again.

3 Directions

Let's see how that works if we cycle through the directions on the first three notes of the C major scale.

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What we can observe here, is that either we have:

• 1 note on one string and 2 notes on the next;
• 2 notes on one string and 1 note on the next;
• 3 notes on one string.

Putting it together

Let’s now combine this with our octave patterns and play a C Major scale in different positions.

We’re not going to start at the very first possibility to play a C major scale on the neck, because that would involve using the open strings. For this first step I want you to see the fingering and with open strings it gets a little muddled. Not to worry though, they will be added back in later on.

Left

Let’s start in 5th position, meaning your index finger will be at the 5th fret. Your pinky will then be at the 8th fret. 8th fret, 6th string = C
From there we’ll go into our first “category”; we’re going to continue behind the note.

Down

Next we’re going to shift to the 7th position, so that our index finger is on the 7th fret and our middle finger is on the C on the 8th fret.
From here we’re going to complete the scale going straight down.

Right

And finally we’ll shift over one last time and we’ll have our index finger on the 8th fret, so we’re in 8th position.
From here we continue after the note.

Have a look at the diagrams below:

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This is what that looks like when we go from C to C per position.
Notice the lighter green notes on the 2nd and 3rd strings.
Because of the tuning of the strings, these notes are doubled. Hence the highlighted color.

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As you can see, we end up with 7 positions. Here are a few other things we can conclude:

• The lowest possible root is either on the 5th, 6th or 4th string
• When the lowest possible root is on the 5th or 6th string, all three directions are possible (Left, Down, Right)
• When the lowest possible root is on the 4th string, the only possible direction is Right
• If we continue beyond the root notes, we end up with a 3-note-per-string fingering, but with a doubled note on the 2nd and 3rd string

Here's another carousel, with larger images and the full scales from top to bottom:

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