Once You See This Pattern, The Guitar Fretboard Gets Much Smaller

0:00 If you go up to and over one, then you get how the knight moves in chess. And that gives you a power chord. But if I went over another one, that would give me my octave. Because this is an E string. This is going to be an E string. So what we do is we just mirror that over there. This shape here with the C shape. This does exactly the same thing in the E shape there. Does that mean we always have to start on C? No, it doesn't. This is our starting point. Now, the reason I think this one's useful is because when we start with, say, box one patterns for our pentatonics or for our major scales or for E-shaped bar chords, then we're going to need to know what the note is on the E string. And that's that this is how this all ties in. And because that's such a tangible spot, it's something

0:47 that you're going to memorize early on in your guitar journey. So, really what we're going to do is we're going to spell it out caged, but we're going to spell it out a bit differently. E D C A G. It's still caged. Yes, it's still caged. The only difference is it's just from a different starting point. Okay, that's all it is. And it's primarily because I am saying we're going to start on an E-shaped octave. This is the root note for an E chord. This is going to be for an E major. It's going to be for an E minor. It's going to be for an E7. Whatever chord that you can think of, an E minor major 7, doesn't matter. It's still going to be the same. The root note distribution is always going to be the same thing. So, like before, we had this pattern here.

1:33 I'll just draw these ones in. So, that's the E-shaped octave taken care of. Let me put this in and show you how that works across there. And I put an E there. Let me just put root. It doesn't really matter because this, like I say, it could be a third. It could be any note that you want to find. Yeah. So it works for intervals. I'm putting R in for root. It could be either an alphabet letter or it could be an interval. It's completely up to that you need in the moment. If you're trying to identify intervals or scale degrees, then this is going to come in handy. So we've got this E shape in here. The next one we're going to tap into then is going to be this D shape. Look, because it's going around this circle. So we're going to go D string. Look, that's just telling us straight there up three over two. And

2:20 that's going to give us the pattern. Have I done this the wrong way? I have. I've messed up on my diagram. But look guys, you'll forgive me. There's a printing error on me box there. I'll do that differently for PDF club. I'm going to take this route. I'm going to put it there. And we know that it's up three over two. Dang. Right. Okay. Hopefully I've got it right for the next bit. They're all going to be out actually, but we will keep going because we don't want to have to rip this up and start again. and we we can manage this. So you can see that we're one fret out really essentially. So that moves down there and then this gives us the D shape. So that is the D-shaped octave there. I'm going to take that note there that is on the B string. You see we've jumped from the D string to the B string. So I need

3:07 this one here. This is a critical one because I know that people get a little bit blind when it comes to seeing the notes on B strings. Yes, it's easy to know your notes on the E string and A string. D string maybe gets a bit fuzzy. G string fuzzy still. E string, if you remember that that's an E string, then you're okay. But the B string is probably the weakest one. Now, if you know how this works with this next octave shape, then this is going to be super helpful because what we can do is we can use the C shape, which is what's next. If you look, so we've gone the E shape, we've done the D shape. Now, now we start the acronym again. It's the caged acronym, but we're just starting. We're jumping from the end of it to the beginning of it. And that means we take that over there. Now, because you might know your A string better than your B

3:53 string, what you can do is just use that C shape there going all the way across. Nice and easy. You could do that there. And I'm going to do the same thing here. So, look, C- shape and know that it's over three frets distance there. So, we move that there. So, there's my C- shape, guys. But, I've just jumped. So, it's going to go edg if you want to call it that. But get used to saying it in this circular way. D C A G E. Right. So, after the C shape comes the A shape. So, we know that that goes up two over two. I'm just going to put the octave shape in there just for reference. Up two, over two. That takes us into the A shape octave. So hopefully you can

4:39 see this is connecting all these notes up. Like I said before, that's an E note, E note, E note, E note, E note, E note. Notice I'm not referring to fret numbers. I'm not having to think about fret numbers in here. So this kind of bypasses tab in some ways. Right now we've got to the A. What's the next one in the sequence that we're going to get? It's the G. So let's go through the G. So we go one, two, three, and then over. And because that's an E string, it's going to be mirrored exactly the same on the other E string. Gives me my other shape that I need. So, let me just put that there. I'm going to put those in there. And then you can see, let me get my fancy colors. Look at my hands. I look like I'm Bob Ross or something with

5:25 all my paint brushes. So, we need the last one, which is this blue color because the G shape and the D shape, they go up three over two. the E and the A shape, they go up two, over two. That's the the main ones to get. And in fact, actually, I did do a video on this before, and I think this one demonstrates it perfectly. What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I think of as being an octave scaffold. I've done a lesson on it. So, if I take this note, I'm going to do it as the alphabet letter name there. So, I've got an E to an E there. And what happens is we can join up the E shape and the D shape. So I get up two over two. Then I get an up three over two.

6:17 So you can see there this goes from an E shape to a D shape. And because this is on three different strings, look, it's taking care of the E string, the D string, and the B string, which is important because I know that's on the B string, and I just mentioned that here about that B string being fuzzy. Then what I can do is I can just use that shape there. Now, watch what I do here. I'm going to do the same thing that I did here with the up two over two. Up two, over two because this is my A-shaped octave pattern, and I know that the caged octave after the A is going to be the G. So I go up three over two and there's the A and then we get the G shape there. But essentially you can see

7:03 there's this scaffold that comes in here. And these little shapes are super useful. This one here starting on the E string covers three strings. And then this one starting on the A string covers the other three strings. So you can cover all six strings with that. Now, if you wanted to, you could say to yourself, "Yeah, but Ricky, I can see where that C octave fits in there." And then now I've spelled it and it goes E D C A G E D C A G. And it's all just magically just formed in front of you. So, this is another way of seeing how you connect those caged octaves. Yes, we can see them purely from the perspective of joining it up using the caged acronym, but that keeps it in one place. Look at this pattern. You look at how

7:49 that shifts. I'm just going across there. Always be looking for patterns in everything, guys. Because the guitar is a patternbased instrument. This is just one framework, guys. I'm not saying it's the only framework. I'm saying it's one. There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. Not that we skin [music] cats these days. Make sure that you move it into the positions that you are unfamiliar with [music] because if you practice in your comfort zones, you're not expanding your knowledge.