■ UNLOCK THE GUITAR NECK
■ UNLOCK THE GUITAR NECK
■ UNLOCK THE GUITAR NECK
■ Unlocking the guitar neck is my own method of creating a library of chords and scales easily. I came up with the idea back in the mid 90's whilst at college.
■ The main purpose is to encourage you to make your own chord scale reference book, as opposed to buying a shiny one from the store, full of fancy pictures, that'll get shelved in a few weeks.
■ Three Main charts: Formula Chart, Chromatic Interval Chart, and Blank Guitar Neck Charts are needed to plot our resulting notes. To make it easier, I've made a sheet with all three of these charts on too.
■ Example: Let's look at how we can find the notes in a Dminor chord anywhere on the guitar neck.
■ 1 - Find the formula for Minor in the Chord/Scale Formula Chart = 1, b3, 5.
■ 2 - Next, find those numbers in the Chromatic Interval Chart.
■ Along the top line - 1 being where D is. This gives us the notes D=1, F=b3, and A=5.
■ 3 - Print off some Blank Guitar Necks to circle out the notes D, F, A on the guitar neck.
■ If you've done it correctly it should look something like the yellow guitar chart.
■ Now we've done this for Dminor, the same principle applies to every other minor chord.
■ The minor formula works for all 12 keys.
■ However, every chord and scale formula, major, dominant 7, etc... works for all 12 keys.
■ Now do this for major, minor 7, etc..and then scales too!
■ See the Unlocking Chords and Unlocking Scales charts for a visual guide!
■ BUILD YOUR OWN CHORD | SCALE LIBRARY
■ Print out blank guitar or bass necks, grab yourself some highlighters, and get going. Pretty soon you will have acquired your very own chord/scale library reference book. Use this
■ Use this to see patterns and shapes across the entire neck, and see how many different ways you can play the same chord or scale.
■ I've seen students amass a huge volume of fretboard information in a matter of weeks using this method.
■ Most importantly, because you've done it yourself, you will understand it better on a much deeper level.
■ Effectively, we're unlocking the guitar fretboard and understanding basic music theory all in one go.
■ You'll no longer be stumped when any chord or scale is needed to play a song, and song writing itself becomes a lot more fun.