Using Stabilisers on the Guitar Part One: Reducing the Neck

Using Stabilisers on the Guitar Pt 1: Reducing the Neck

People have a better memory than they give themselves credit for. The key is how people try to remember things. For example, if you can order things out in a logical manner, you are not relying on memory. You are actually relying on order to remember itself.

Why make things harder than they have to be?

Collocation and Landmarks
If you know that in a shopping street, one shop comes after the other, you don’t need to remember exactly what number the shop in the street has. If you know where one note is located, you don’t have to actively remember each and every note. Rather what it’s near. If we make landmarks all over the neck, we can base everything else around them.

On most guitars there are 20 frets. This means that there are four sets of five frets. If you break down the guitar into these groups, your life will become much easier. You can simply learn each group independently, or two of them really well! This will result in an active understanding of the fretboard, in the same way I could say “There is a new shop in town next to the book shop.” On the guitar, this is like saying “There is an A# right before that B.” Once we have some simple markers in our mind, it allows us to navigate all the unknowns by their proximity to our “landmarks.”

Get used to drawing a five fret box!

The Fifth to Ninth Fret as an example

If you look at the 5th to 9th fret you have some obvious markers. Firstly, you have the dot on the 5th fret. You should then have a dot on your 7th fret and 9th fret. The 5th fret is usually known well to guitarists. This is because people tune the string beneath to the 5th fret of the string above. The only string that deviates is G, as the B string is tuned to the fourth fret.

If you get to know this section well, you will see some really great patterns emerge on the guitar. The first pattern I will call an arrow. When you write down a pictograph of this section of the neck, you will notice that the two E strings and D string work together to make an arrow. As the E strings produce the same notes as each other (in different octaves), and the D string produces the same note two frets later. This means as A is on the 5th fret of both E strings,

The arrow shape, showing where A# is. Many people
get confused and put B as the note directly after A.
Crossing things out is fine!

you can add two frets and find A on the 7th fret of the D string. This is a pattern that never changes. Once you understand this, you have a really useful tool for navigating the fretboard. Afterall, if you couldn’t work out what the 8th fret of the D-string was, you can use the E strings to navigate your way to an answer. Once you know the 7th fret of D is A, you know the next fret will be A#.

The reason this is important, is because if you are playing with someone in a key that uses A#, you can use one A# to deduce where the rest of the key is in this section. It may seem hard now, but with as little as half an hour of directed practice a week, soon you will have a clear picture of the fretboard.

There are dots on the guitar, but if you don't
know them, pen yourself in with Blu Tack.

Blu Tack to Build Confidence

Blu tack can be placed or removed on the guitar with no problem. This adjustable goal post can be used on the top of the guitar neck to help you concentrate on specific places you want to explore thoroughly.  In this situation, looking at the 5th to 9th frets, you can build borders by sticking some blue tack on the 5th and 9th frets to pen yourself in!

Once you have got the blu tack on, stick on a song you like through some loud speakers and play along to it within the limits. This will really build your understanding of this part of the neck. It makes it so much easier to use the rest of the neck after you've seen how things link together on a smaller scale.

Things don't need to be pretty! If you can't draw
something like this from memory, it may be hard
for you to assign the right notes to frets.

The Circle of Notes

Patterns are all around us.
See how the diagonal line guides us.

Working out which notes have sharps and flats can be confusing, but when you understand that the notes are named using a musical alphabet, things get easier. Like the normal alphabet, there is an order. The difference between the normal alphabet and the musical one is this-the musical alphabet is like a spiral staircase. Once you get from A-G you start again. You are playing the same notes, but in a different octave.

Reduce the five fret box! Learn
three strings first, one apart.
Look at how things repeat!

When you are looking at a section of neck, you are also looking at slices of this musical staircase. On the D string, the fifth fret is G. That means that things begin anew! So presumably, the next fret is A. A good guess, but not quite! It is G#.  To rule out any mistakes, you can simply blu tack a piece of paper with the circle of notes on your guitar. There are two positions that work well, the hollow in the body on top of the guitar, or inverted on the bottom of the right hand side of the guitar body. This means looking down at it, you can read it easily whilst playing!

These stabilisers can help you learn things much faster! Don’t hesitate to give it a shot.
For guitar lessons contact entslrs@gmail.com for more details.