How do you see the fretboard when playing?

thing

I'm mostly an interval guy So if I'm in a particular key then I can hear the interval of where I want to go next and it kind of appears under my fingers. I guess it's become automatic now after fifty odd years. I couldn't really describe the mechanics of how I play to be honest.

Interestingly this is why I like playing classical, you don't have to give the actual playing bit much thought, it's all there in the dots in front of you. Like having sat nav instead of trying to find your own way somewhere.

bertie

shapes.   largely cos I dont know much theory/music and to work out "notes" would take me 35 minutes a song

PAL

I don't and by this I mean I know what key I'm in and anything goes ! Maybe this isn't clear but I play off chord shapes
  and inversions it sort of comes natural ! Think of it this way do we need to visualise the alphabet to speak ! 
  we just do it without over thinking it !



  

guitarjack66

PAL said:

I don't and by this I mean I know what key I'm in and anything goes ! Maybe this isn't clear but I play off chord shapes
  and inversions it sort of comes natural ! Think of it this way do we need to visualise the alphabet to speak ! 
  we just do it without over thinking it !



  

How do you calculate your inversions? I know most,not all,chord shapes but not sure on how to work out how to play inversions.

Roland

Inversions are only the theory which we ascribe to a chord. There’s no reason to calculate them when playing. In practice you think “I want C, and the notes which make up the sound I want are ...” which is often shortened to “the notes I can reach easily are ...”

ronnyb

Not sure if this is relevant to this discussion but the other day i played my granddaughters Alvarez AP70 which i had given her to learn on ages ago. It has no fret marker dots on the fretboard itself, only on the edge. I didn't realise how much i rely on seeing the dots for left hand positioning. I'm mainly a fingerpicker and was constantly making mistakes playing it. 

guitarjack66

ronnyb said:

Not sure if this is relevant to this discussion but the other day i played my granddaughters Alvarez AP70 which i had given her to learn on ages ago. It has no fret marker dots on the fretboard itself, only on the edge. I didn't realise how much i rely on seeing the dots for left hand positioning. I'm mainly a fingerpicker and was constantly making mistakes playing it. 

Interesting. I have mentioned before how I wouldnt buy a guitar without markers on the visible part of the fretboard and particularly Faith guitars. I tend to peek over the top so markers on the side of the neck arent that helpful.

bertie

guitarjack66 said:

PAL said:

I don't and by this I mean I know what key I'm in and anything goes ! Maybe this isn't clear but I play off chord shapes
  and inversions it sort of comes natural ! Think of it this way do we need to visualise the alphabet to speak ! 
  we just do it without over thinking it !



  

How do you calculate your inversions? I know most,not all,chord shapes but not sure on how to work out how to play inversions.

why would you need to "work them out"  ?  if you know the shape (s)  then surely you just play em ?  if it dont sound right,  play it differently

Roland

ronnyb said:

Not sure if this is relevant to this discussion but the other day i played my granddaughters Alvarez AP70 which i had given her to learn on ages ago. It has no fret marker dots on the fretboard itself, only on the edge. I didn't realise how much i rely on seeing the dots for left hand positioning. I'm mainly a fingerpicker and was constantly making mistakes playing it. 

I’m the opposite. I like side dots when moving up and down the neck, but never uses those on the face of the fretboard.

Kilgore

guitarjack66 said:

ronnyb said:

Not sure if this is relevant to this discussion but the other day i played my granddaughters Alvarez AP70 which i had given her to learn on ages ago. It has no fret marker dots on the fretboard itself, only on the edge. I didn't realise how much i rely on seeing the dots for left hand positioning. I'm mainly a fingerpicker and was constantly making mistakes playing it. 

Interesting. I have mentioned before how I wouldnt buy a guitar without markers on the visible part of the fretboard and particularly Faith guitars. I tend to peek over the top so markers on the side of the neck arent that helpful.

When I first started playing it took me about 3 months to even notice the side markers and another 3 months to realise they had a purpose and weren't there for aesthetic reasons. 

LastMantra

I'm honestly not sure about this, never really thought about it. Don't really know about shapes or intervals, don't know what "CAGED" means.

Need to have a think about it.

Or maybe not, I'll probably forget how to play if I think about it too much   

guitarjack66

bertie said:

guitarjack66 said:

PAL said:

I don't and by this I mean I know what key I'm in and anything goes ! Maybe this isn't clear but I play off chord shapes
  and inversions it sort of comes natural ! Think of it this way do we need to visualise the alphabet to speak ! 
  we just do it without over thinking it !



  

How do you calculate your inversions? I know most,not all,chord shapes but not sure on how to work out how to play inversions.

why would you need to "work them out"  ?  if you know the shape (s)  then surely you just play em ?  if it dont sound right,  play it differently

Your comment sounds a bit hostile,but maybe that is just how it looks in text?
 am working off shapes mostly now, but I have no idea if they are inversions or not as I just work out shapes. As for my comment 'how do you work them out?' This relates to how there is generally a 'trick' or 'shortcut' to find out how to change or find something on the guitar,eg,if you play the minor pentatonic you just go down 3 frets to find the major pentatonic or 'you'd find a first inversion by moving your index finger here or your ring finger here etc,etc. That is all I meant with my comment.

Rocker

The solos and intros I play tend to be simple and usually are a line or two of the song. Or something like that. To achieve this I play the three strings that form part of the Barre in the A shape. The fifth fret for the key of C, seventh fret for D etc. There is one note that I have to play one fret lower to sound right. Sort for the vagueness but I don’t have a guitar to hand. My method works for the needs of our family singalongs. It seems to fit into the CAGED system but I never bothered to follow up on this analysis. 

Roland

guitarjack66 said:

... As for my comment 'how do you work them out?' This relates to how there is generally a 'trick' or 'shortcut' to find out how to change or find something on the guitar …

It’s accumulated knowledge from different directions. One aspect is learning the names of the notes at each fret position. So if you want to play a C chord you know where the available C, G and E notes are. Another is knowing chord shapes, so if you play A as x02220 then C is x35553. Others are arpeggio and scale patterns, which can also be moved around. The one which comes with practice is intervals. The previous methods will help you find a note, but often it’s the other way around: I played this note and it sounded good. What was is?

Axe2Grind

This is a really good question and will be interesting reading all the comments. For me, I started life as a keyboardist and so I approached music like a keyboardist which means learning your scales end to end, the associated chords, inversions, fingerings, and then on to chromatics, whole tone and diminished scales etc. etc. By the time I started learning guitar, I had already developed a good ear and my approach was to learn the major scale on the fretboard across the whole fretboard, no dividing it up and learning each section of it as a mode. This one big shape is what I see when I play most things and this shape is moveable depending what key you're playing in. It allows me to play all over the fretboard, using 3 note per string ideas or however many notes I want to play on a single string, move across the fretboard on a string to move around and not get boxed into s small part of the fretboard. Diminished and whole tone are pretty simple as the intervals follow the same pattern and there are two possible ways to play them. 
I very rarely use those as well as the harmonic minor which is just sharpening the 7the note in a natural minor or 5th note of the major scale. Same with the melodic minor, never really played about with that and I find that one weird as it differs depending if you're ascending or descending. If you know your octave shapes then this one big major shape is not hard to learn as when you use your octave shapes, notes repeat as you move to another string in octaves. If you know your major scale across the whole fretboard in any key, you know your minors, and all the major modes.
That is how I look at the fretboard and I also use my ears, I will throw in passing notes, chromatics to taste, depending on what I am playing. I've had zero lessons, knowing keyboards really does help you play guitar, 

Greatape

Big topic, always changing. 

First, I learned CAGED. I'm not sure I know it now as fingerings without revision, but the sound of those scales is in my head and I know where to go

Then I learned every note name on each string, through in-position reading studies. SUPER USEFUL. 

Then I started practicing along one string, two, three, three notes per string etc. 

Then worked on intervals. 

Now I don't practice single note scales at all. I certainly don't use them as musical creative materials. Totally pointless. I do however practice key signatures in triads, and I work on voice leading those triads and knowing what the chord tones are in them. Also seeing triads as parts of other chords. It's all about chords, because they contain all sorts of useful, musical relationships. Learning how they relate to each other also, etc. Which triads to drop over a dom7 to create altered tones, or make it sound like a 9th or 13th etc. 

When I play live, there is a bit of attention to chord data on unfamiliar tunes but mostly and increasingly by ear. 

I will often practice learning simple melodies by ear, to get interval sounds better embedded. Nursery rhymes, carols, film themes etc. Then analyse what's going on. 

Would echo thoughts about timbral options afforded by playing notes in different places. I typically want to minimise the number of strings involved. I'll shift position more than cross strings because if you're mostly on string 2&3, hitting an A on the top E can be jarring.(Maybe you want that)

And reading. Always doing reading practice because mine is not good enough. 

So in summary, mostly I see the fretboard as triads, intervals and through those, sounds. 

CaseOfAce

"Play the notes, not patterns."

Jeff Kolman in GT mag this month. 
He mentions it in relation to playing over the changes in say an F minor to a D minor chord and the notes within those.
Rather than thinking in terms of major scale patterns / modes - what are the key chord tones within those chords.

Whether that will actually make me stop using that damn Box 1 pentatonic blues scale pattern is another question.

Oh.. and as regards home amps - here he is using a Fender G-Dec...