naming guitar cages

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D-Tuned
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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

BobUnderwood wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 4:54 am

D-Tuned:

Your A-F#m cheatsheet has an error: Bbm should be Bm.

Thanks! I just clicked to close a ready to send preview,
this edition will be a little shorter :oops:

There was another error in the #4 pattern as well

3#__A-F#m__cheatsheet-1k.png
3#__A-F#m__cheatsheet-1k.png (212.41 KiB) Viewed 3299 times
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merlyn
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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by merlyn »

BobUnderwood wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 4:54 am

... OTOH, how would you finger a chromatic scale? ...

Frank Gambale in one of his instructional videos used this fingering :

Image

To remember that you could notice that the first finger notes make an augmented arpeggio :

Image

This changes position a lot, and that brings in D-Tuned's point in his first post :

D-Tuned wrote: Mon May 22, 2023 2:44 am

... I've read about '1st position' but am not sure if that's a cage name or not. ...

I think we've established that they're not called 'cages'. As for positions ... it depends. In classical guitar a position is where the first finger is. That makes sense, as in classical guitar the first finger often uses a barre. In jazz/rock/pop/pentatonic noodling all twelve notes are under your fingers in any position, so a position is a six fret area. This diagram is not a fingering as such, it shows which finger takes which fret :

Image

The second and third fingers don't do a stretch, because they don't like doing that. A position is then the fret below where the second finger is. The diagram above is in third position, even though there are notes at the second fret. A chromatic scale, starting on C, using this idea is this :

Image

That's the ascending form. When descending I use my fourth finger twice :

Image

I made these fretboard diagrams using Guitar Scientist. I was also using the Firefox extension Dark Reader, so the colours have come out a bit Autumnal/wonky. On Guitar Scientist there are three types of fingerings : CAGED, three notes per string, and Berklee style, which are things you could look into.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

Just a very brief comment here, firstly whatever the thingies may be called was my question, what they actually are is the 5 diagrams that I suppose millions of people just use and which I did not invent but which figure in most books. Second, when I thought of 'positions' I was mistakenly thinking of the C-shape being first and the others in succession moving away from the nut in the case of standard EADGBE tuning. Evidently this gets completely overturned as soon as one tunes down or up and the first pattern can no longer be the same. They do have a relative sequential relationship but I have no idea how that would be expressed. They may well be called patterns or shapes or scale-diagrams or what I spontaneoulsy thought of them as; namely, cages. The purpose of my question was to find out if there was any such naming convention that was ruling tradition failing which I'll be happy to continue calling them cages :mrgreen:

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by merlyn »

Klatu Barada Nikto.

BobUnderwood
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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by BobUnderwood »

D-Tuned:

CAGED is just an acronym for five commonly used chord shapes (I would call them voicings). They have no particular harmonic relationship to each other.

Why are you tuning your guitar a whole-step low? Want to see what life is like for Bb-instrument players? I submit it will make it harder to learn this stuff.

merlyn:

Thanks for the chromatic scale fingerings. I never considered some of them - think I like Frank Gambale's the most.

Guitar Scientist looks like a great tool - a little disappointed to see it show the fourth note of the Lydian mode as b5 - of course it must be #4.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

BobUnderwood wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 3:24 am

D-Tuned:

CAGED is just an acronym for five commonly used chord shapes (I would call them voicings). They have no particular harmonic relationship to each other.

That's why in my ignorance I initially thought of them as cages. Works for me, seeing that there's no better, more appropriate, more popular or more relational canonical name for them :-)

Why are you tuning your guitar a whole-step low? Want to see what life is like for Bb-instrument players? I submit it will make it harder to learn this stuff.

I'm 79 and my fingers really appreciate the difference in string tension, I'll never go back to EADGBE and am starting to have quite a wide cheat-library home made for DGCFAD. The confusion is not an issue because I made the switch before my learned databank could walk on two legs and because I didn't get into music to become a musician but to forestall brain-rot, I will never be a guitar-hero thank you, but will fool around with my little Epiphone LP with classic 57's for the foreseeable future (when I have time that is). I do "like" music a lot mind you (SOME music I should say), far be it from being just some neurological 'maintenance chore' that would better describe things like shredding.

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merlyn
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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by merlyn »

We've been though this before but ... just play by feckin' ear. :D

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by GMoon »

Cool discussion. I first learned guitar from a "Music for Millions: Lead Guitar (1972)" book. Forget the internet, personal computers didn't even exist.

The book used "positions" (1 through 5), and renamed the minor pentatonic the "blues scale." The book relied heavily on tablature, just what an early teen (sans patience) needed. While admittedly a limited way to approach music theory, it is a way to learn fingering patterns that can be reused: slide the minor patterns down four frets, and it becomes the major pentatonic scale at the original root. Add a couple more notes to the pattern it's a major scale.

Those additional notes in the pattern transfer to modal playing, as well: the minor pentatonic scale becomes Aeolian mode. Third position fingering (moved to the root position) becomes Dorian mode... That first book called Dorian mode "a minor jazz scale."

The fingering at each position can be moved/converted to the other modes. I didn't learn about modes for many years, but I was using them.

Positions can be tied together with slides, etc., to add "momentum" and build runs. It's an over-simplified way of learning, but does teach a lot of fingering basics. The original position patterns all fell within five frets, so minimal hand/finger movement was required. There are zillions of ways to modify "positions," which physically change phrasing -- once you break out of the riged positional constraint.

There are many other exotic scales (as well as harmonic & melodic minor, etc) that fall outside those simple position fingerings, which are only a basic framework.

Of course you need to learn the chords, and how the scales interact within progressions, WHILE you learn the notes. Too much emphasis on fingering does limit one's understanding of the theory. Even while your playing gets faster...

It's only much later I became aware of other "models" of learning the fretboard, like the CAGED or blues "boxes." They all have a place in guitar instruction, and I'm sure each one effects phrasing in subtle (and not subtle) ways.

Use whatever works for you; take what you like and blend it into your playing style. And you gotta learn SONGS, or it's just calisthenics. :D

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by merlyn »

I would draw a distinction between practicing and playing. When you practice you can stick to fingerings, try out modes, and have diagrams in front of you. But when playing -- put all that away and play.

It may seem daft, but a good thing to practice is to play simple tunes you know, like Happy Birthday, Auld Lang Syne, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or Amazing Grace by ear. Once you get the tune right in one key, change the key. This joins up the fingers and the ear. Then when you play you can aim to play what you hear.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

merlyn wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:37 am

We've been though this before but ... just play by feckin' ear. :D

Nocan do, not initially anyway, patience.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

GMoon wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 4:00 pm

Cool discussion. I first learned guitar from a "Music for Millions: Lead Guitar (1972)" book. Forget the internet, personal computers didn't even exist.
....
Use whatever works for you; take what you like and blend it into your playing style. And you gotta learn SONGS, or it's just calisthenics. :D

My not quoting all of it in no way means that any of it is less appreciated! I DO learn songs ..4 in 8 years :-)

My most significant limit is the lack of time to put into it, but for me that's not an issue.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by merlyn »

D-Tuned wrote: Thu Jun 15, 2023 12:10 am
merlyn wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:37 am

We've been though this before but ... just play by feckin' ear. :D

Nocan do, not initially anyway, patience.

Honestly you can. The more you do it the better you'll get at it.

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Re: naming guitar cages

Post by D-Tuned »

merlyn wrote: Fri Jun 16, 2023 1:05 pm
D-Tuned wrote: Thu Jun 15, 2023 12:10 am
merlyn wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:37 am

We've been though this before but ... just play by feckin' ear. :D

Nocan do, not initially anyway, patience.

Honestly you can. The more you do it the better you'll get at it.

Not initially. But it does go in leaps and bounds, I just noticed that playing in a caged scale lets me improvise (surprisingly cook even) without false notes except for the odd accidental. This might well come easy much later but at this stage it's exactly what I need to build inertia. Ditto for chords, much later I should be able just throw them around by ear, voicings and all, but at this stage it helps to have a cheat-sheet in front of me to limit the field to 7 for the key, plus voicings that I can finger.

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