This is all may be kind of abstract and the real answer could be just practice a lot but I was wondering if anyone has “solved” visualization. I have done nearly everything. CAGED Arpeggios, Triads, Arpeggios by inversion, 2 octave Scale shapes, 1 octave scale shapes, intervals etc etc etc, and found that some are kind of a bottomless pit in regards to effort vs time, while others sink in pretty quickly. This is all fine and good, however, I have not found that learning any of these have made my playing more musical or interesting. Sure, I can play not wrong notes over days of wine and roses, but I still am not really making music that interests me. I have seen various discussions about this where users have said that they wished they hadn’t spent so much time playing scales. I guess I am just sort of at a loss because a lot of music pedagogy at least in my jazz program tends to lean towards “just play scales and arpeggios a lot”. Does this work for guitar? If not, then does purely intervals work, or something else/whatever works for you? Idk, this is getting rambly now but how do you recommend visualizing the fretboard/learning guitar to promote making music and not just running scales/arpeggios.
I subscribe to the idea that making music is more about playing what you hear in your head, regardless of how it fits into a particular scale / arpeggio sequence. That being said, learning those things would help “connect the dots” of what you want to play, with how to play it.
Honestly I agree with @Pepepicks66 in that all of those systems are pattern based systems useful for finding where base notes typically fall across the strings. For example CAGED (which I would argue is a bit misleading) is just another triad based system that will help in showing you where the root 3rd and 5th occur for a given key both vertically and horizontally across the strings, but that is only really useful as a place marker of where those particular intervals are, it’s not going to help you make an interest melody. That you have to play around with.
Honestly I think a better next tier up approach is to mix any of those systems you mentioned with modal vocabulary, and think about what kind of color can be added over each chord. From there play around with rhythm, wider intervalic leaps etc.
Some thoughts, and my own opinion. I hope someone finds it helpful?
I think that first and foremost that if one wants to start thinking in terms of notes, and chord tones, you need to start thinking in terms of notes. That means abandoning a geometric mindset and embracing a ‘note’ oriented one. It means, bye-bye tablature and hello standard notation, it means composing melodies and ideas using notation, and developing a sight-reading skillset. Transcribing and doing both a harmonic and melodic analysis, understanding the harmony of what you’re playing as well as the intervallic implications over various chords.
Of course, transcribing music and than transposition of said music is extremely helpful in this regard as well. Or once you can read well, reading a 3rd above, 5th etc etc what’s written.
Solfege and eartraining figure into this as well in a very, very big way - I mean, if you can internalize the pitches, and hear and understand them all things become easier.
Improvisation could be thought of as spontaneous composition so the easiest and most tangible way to get started on this is to write a lot of melodies suited to varied chord changes.
Keep in mind that despite all of this sort of thing, I think that it’s all “preporatory” type stuff - I am not certain that anyone truly “improvises”. It’s kind of a regurgitation of pre-practiced material. Lots of awesome jazz cats know the real book inside and out, and if you look carefully at the chord changes you will see re-occurring chord progressions…
I hope that’s somewhat helpful?
There are at least two approaches here:
- look at the layout of notes in the key and select from them “visually”
- listen to the note that you want in your mind and be able to instantly find it on the guitar neck
I have spoken to a number of famous pianists and ALL of them have a “mental piano sound” that their fingers know how to instantly copy/play. The mental piano barely leads the actual piano. (So they “hear” the start of the mental note and the actual note sounds a tiny fraction of time afterwards.) I’ll bet that great musicians on any instrument have an analogous process going on. So I suspect that going in the direction that @Scottulus is advocating might bear some fruits if you want to become quite musical.
(Disclaimer: Not only am I not an expert, I don’t improvise.)
This is a pretty interesting perspective that I’ve not really heard before. I am sort of skeptical so I’ll just tell you what I think and you can respond if you’d like.
I feel like guitars advantage and disadvantage is that it is a geometric instrument. If I want to play ascending diminished triads in minor 3rds, all I have to do is move a geometric shape up and down. If I want to do something like that on piano I have to learn the notes and voicings. I feel like this is something that I should be taking advantage of when improvising. Maybe I’m wrong, as I’m not a great improviser by any means, but I feel like not using at least some of the guitar’s geometric orientation to my advantage would be missing out.
I do agree that relying on geometry entirely might not be a good idea as a lot of musical ideas don’t map themselves very well to shapes. However, even when playing piano there is a certain geometric layout that I have associated with certain chords and scales. I think that part of the learning process is associating the physicality or shapes of your instrument to sound. Geometry (might?) be a part of that?
Whole lot of rambling to say basically I agree with you, I just think that maybe shapes could be of some help potentially. +1 on ear training and solfege as well.
Pat Martino had an entire system built around the geometric nature of the fretboard - if you google “Pat Martino Sacred Geometry” you can find some articles discussing it.
I would advise however that it’s probably best to use as an adjunct to more traditional knowledge of the fretboard rather than being something you start with.