[Bill_Brown]

Hi @BrandonK , I’m glad to see that you’re going through the FW course, IMHO, one of the best gems here at TAC. So the “patterns” that Tony is teaching are ways to find the “same note” on other strings. The only problem I have with the way he’s teaching this is that it involves too much memorization – skip two frets and go down two strings, or is it go down 3 strings and skip 3 frets – I can’t remember all that and no wonder you’re asking for help. Now don’t get me wrong, this is an important and helpful concept to learn (and why Tony is teaching it) because it’s a foundational way to move around the fretboard. It’s a concept that I struggled to learn (with the way Tony goes about teaching it) until another TAC member showed me a different approach. When I saw this “different approach”, the lightbulbs went on and everything about this concept became much easier to execute. I’ll try my best to explain it – yes there is memorization, but not near the amount that Tony is teaching.

I’ll start with these letters – B A G E D. These letters are the string names on the guitar. Treat them like the musical alphabet, you can move forward or backward from any starting point on any string. The way they’re laid out (BAGED) is the way to find the next nearest same note (moving forward) going from the nut to the body of the guitar. Remember, you can start at any string and move backward as well. But that isn’t everything needed to find the next “same note”. We need to know how many frets to skip between strings, so now come the numbers – 1 1 2 1 2. Now I’m going to consolidate the letters and numbers which will yield B1A1G2E1D2B. For example, let’s start on the B string 1st fret (C note). To find the next nearest C note we will skip 1 fret (which will put us at the 3rd fret) and go to the A string, giving us the C note at the A string 3rd fret. From there, we’ll skip 1 fret and go to the G string, which will give us the C note on the G string 5th fret. From there, we’ll skip 2 frets and go to the E string (either loE or hiE), giving us the C note on either E string 8th fret. From there, we skip 1 fret and go to the D string, giving us the C note on the D string 10th fret. To complete the cycle, we skip 2 frets and go back to the B string, giving us the C note on the B string 13th fret.

To me, this approach is much easier and more clear than how Tony is teaching this concept. I hope you (and anyone else reading this) find the same clarity as I did with this approach for this foundational concept.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by  Bill_Brown.