 Guitar and Excel, C major, A minor scale fret number nine, focusing on the F note. Get ready and some coffee, starting with a Zen proverb to get us in the right mindset. You can pick your guitar without playing it, but you can't play your guitar without picking it. DEE! Yeah? It's like trying to clap with one hand. What's the sound of one hand clapping? Piece of cake. No, Bart. Oh, okay, Phil. Yeah, maybe you can play your guitar without picking it, possibly using it as a drum or something, but that's not the same thing. That's not the same thing, and you know it, Phil. But that's not the same thing. You're missing the point of the dang Zen proverb on purpose. Missing the point type! Which is to shut the hump up and enter a f***ing space of tranquil serenity, dang it. So start doing the tranquil Zen thing right like me, before I have to play this guitar like a drum over your head. Honestly, it's a sad day when the dang tranquil Zen master has to smack someone in the face with a guitar to get a little respect round here. You hit me in the head with a guitar? Whatever, anyways, let's just get into playing the guitar. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook, that's okay. You could just follow along. But if you do have access, it's a great tool to run scenarios with. Quick recap of the project thus far, noting that you don't have to have watched all prior presentations to follow along with this one. However, a general overview of the overall project can help to orientate us. So let's go back to the first tab to get that overall overview. We're looking at the C major scale and related modes. We started looking at it in open position, which we're defining as frets 1 through 3. This E represents the low or heavy E string, the one closest to the ceiling. Funnest way to map out the notes in open position is to create the chords from the scale that we are working in. In this case, starting with the 1 chord, the C major chord, map it out in open position and discuss it in detail. We then went to the 4 chord because it also has a major chord construction. Then to the 5 chord, the same. Back to the 2 chord, which has a minor chord construction. The 3 chord, the 6 chord, and then the 7 chord, which has a diminished chord construction. If we were to map all the notes and all those chords in open position, we would end up with the major scale and related modes, which would look like the blue notes as we see here. We then wanted to move to the middle of the guitar, so we went to what I would call position 1 or the G shape position. This time, not first learning in the form of chords, but rather in scale shapes that we can tie into the chords we learned in open position. We discussed that shape in detail, focusing in on every note in the C major scale and related chords. Then we went to the next position, which starts on fret number 7. We did a similar process discussing it in detail and how we can look at each of the individual notes within it. Now we're moving to the fret number 9, which is where we are at at this point in time. We're going to a similar process. We talked about the fingering in this area, the intervals, the pentatonic versus the major scale. Now we want to be focusing in this position on the IV chord or the F note, which we can create a major chord from because we're looking at it in relation to the C major scale. That's going to be our project here. Let's give a recap of all the crazy colors that we have. This is our fret board. That E represents the low or heavy E string, the one closest to the ceiling. All the colored notes you can imagine underneath them are basically the blue notes, which represent all the 7 notes out of the 12 notes that are in our C major scale and related modes, if you want to think about it that way. We then put the 5 out of 7 notes in green on top of those blue notes. The dark green here represents the ones that are in the pentatonic scale. Remembering that that pentatonic scale fits perfectly when you're talking about the C major or the related mode, meaning the minor or Aeolian mode, does not fit as well in some other areas such as working around the IV chord because it is going to include, of course, that 4th note, which is an F, which isn't in the pentatonic. We're then mapping then the 3 notes that are the 135 of the chord construction that we would make from the 4th note in the C major scale, and that's what the light green is, and the red is the 3, and the yellow is the 5. So those are our major focal points that we're going to be focusing in on. Then our major focus is on this position, which is going to be what I would call position number 3, but let's start from the beginning. As we're doing this, remember that we're thinking of ourselves as in the C major scale, although we're focused on and practicing the IV note of it and the chord constructed from that IV note, that being note number 9, which is an F, which has a major chord construction, which would be an F major chord. So if we make that the tonic, then we're basically playing in the Lydian mode. So if you think of it modally, it's the same thing, same notes, same chords, but we're just going to reorder it instead of thinking of it as the IV. It will be the I, and everything else will change in relative position. We're going to think for here more like we're still in the key of C, and we're going to basically make the IV note the tonic mainly as our general idea. So if we were then to go back to our open position here, we named this open position a C-shaped position generally because we're looking at the related major scale, which would be the C, and we would have a C construction from it like that, or you could call it position number 4. We of course are going to be focusing on the F, and the F would look like this. So these blue items here represent our normal F shape, which would be like a bar shape or like this in the open position. And then if I was to move to the purple position, it's called an A position or you can call it position number 5 because it's tied to the C major scale, the related major scale. So if I was going to that C and then moving to an A, I would have an A position if I was looking at it in terms of the C major. If I'm looking at it in terms of the F, right now I've got this F right here, which is converting to this shape, which is basically a D shape. So this purple represents that it's inside because it's inside the overlap of the prior shape to this shape, and then you've got your little triangle down here where the purple is on top because it's the shape to the left. And then when we move to the next shape, we're going from this purple to the red. So the red is what I would call the G shape because if you're doing a C, the related major within it, you'd have this, this, this, this, this, this, right? As we saw before, which would be like a G shape, but now we're looking at it in terms of the F. So we're connecting this little bottom part of the D, which is going up to this shape, which is going to be a C type of shape here. So now we've got these red, that's where our focal point is when we're looking at that F, and then we're going from the red to the yellow, or the orange, or whatever you want to call it, which you could call an E shape position because if I was looking at the C chord, it would be an E shape as we saw before, but right now we're looking at the F, the F, so before we had this leading up, the C shape leading into that F, which is now converting, pivoting on this point to like an A shape here, so that this orange is inside, and now the orange is on the outside. And then finally, when we're going from this position two to position three, our point of focus here, then you could call this a D shaped position because if you were focused on the C, or this D shape, that's because it's labeled based on the major chord if you want to call it that, but in terms of the F shape, we're going from this F right here, and now it's converting to like a G shape, which would look something like, which would look something like, hold on, sorry I got my fingers in the wrong place, it would be up here, so like that. So it would be reaching across, and remember this is the nut, and now we're over the net, so you can see it like this, or you could see the bottom half of that kind of G shape. So the G shape looks like this, typically if it was an open position, you could see that up past the nut right here, which you'd have to play half at a time typically, which might look something like this, or something like that. So that's what all of these shapes are doing. Now I'm going to make this shape a little bit smaller on the yellow, because we're focused in on this green shape. That's where our focus is. So a couple of things we could do within this shape. We could, number one, take our F shape here and try to play everything within this position, practicing switching from chords to chords within this position, because everything should be able to be played in a four to five span position. So we should be able to play all these notes and all of these chords in this one four to five fret span fingering position. We also might say, well, I don't know all of the chords in here as well, and I can only map one out at a time, because we're focused on these chord construction. So the only place I really know everything well is in open position. So the next thing I can do is I could practice playing things in open position and jumping to the F up here so that I can noodle around possibly around the F and practice playing the F up here while playing it within other stuff, other chords, which I'm more comfortable playing possibly in the open position. And then, of course, we could try to combine these two shapes. So I could say, is there a way I can go to the prior position and practice moving from the prior position to this position to get my flow going from one to the other so that I can start practicing moving up and down the guitar. And then, of course, we can go to the prior position from that and see if we can get the flow going up and then eventually possibly starting at open position and instead of jumping to a position up here, finding lines that we can fluidly work our way through to this position so we can find fun ways to walk up and down the neck, which could be fulfilling to do and somewhat impressive to do to be able to walk up and back vertically. So those are some of the things that we might try. Remember the general idea here. I'll just show this in open position is that you could say if I'm trying to practice an F chord and what I can play within it, well, I might say I'm going to practice it in the context of a C major scale making the C the tonic, but then switching to the F like a C and then go to the F and then like an A minor an E minor back to a C, right? Or it would be better, possibly, for me to make the four the tonic, meaning making that the central point. Now, the four is a little bit difficult sometimes to make the tonic more difficult than like the six, which is the minor. That would be a minor scale of the two or the Dorian. So the four is a little bit, so it's not impossible. You could do it, but sometimes it's a little bit more wonky to do to make the four the midpoint. So if I'm playing like an F to C and then I'm going to go back to an F. So sometimes it's hard to make the F sound like it's resolving. One trick on that resolving thing, as we saw before, is to say, let me take the fifth. So if that's my F, I can take the fifth. That's a fifth away. That's going to be at my C and I'm going to try to say, I would like to resolve the C back. So sometimes the C is the thing that gives you that resolving feel and you might even make it like a C dominant seven, which will give it another can give it that feel that it's going back. Now, when you do that, you're actually adding a note that's not in our scale but it is a leading note. So you'll see when you're playing the C, you have this note that's the third of the C which leads into the F and then if you hit this note, which is a white note so we don't normally play that, but you can see that it's going to lead back to the C. So you can kind of cheat a little bit to try to get that resolved sound to make it sound more like home. So just something to keep in mind. When you want to go back to the F to home, you might try to play the fifth of it, the C, and then possibly find that dominant seven to bring it home. All right, so let's first go back up to this position and think, okay, if I'm playing everything in this position, let's first map out how we can play these F and F chords. So if we can see the F is across the nut, so it's going to be up top. Just note you might play through basically the scale starting with the F. We're going to do this in chunks going from F to F which will give more of a Lydian sound in our mind but we're going to start with it calling it a four, the related position to the C major scale as opposed to converting it to the one which is what we would do if we converted it to a Lydian numbering system. So I'm going to start with the four here and just go from four to four. Five, six, seven, eight, or one, two, three, four. So here's where I'm at now right there. I'm going to count from here up to the next one which is going to go to this F. So then I'm going to say four, five, six, seven, eight, or one, two, three, four. My voice cracked but I'm on that four now. Let's go back the other way. Four, three, two, one, or eight, four, eight, seven, six, five, four. So now I'm on this F again. That numbering system, by the way, can be a little bit tricky to get in your mind at first but if you do it a few times, you can do it, right? So then we're going to say, all right, this is going to be four, three, two, one, or eight, seven, six, five, four. And then I'm going to complete it going back the last two, going four, four, three, two, two, three, four. So I can play the whole shape but still end on my F. Then I can think about what's the shapes that are in here. We saw that it was a G shape. So this is going to be our construction, the F, the A, and the C. It's typically how we might play the top bit here. So we have to use our pinky to do that so it's a little tricky to grab. So there's going to be the top half of our chord that we can grab that way. And then we have this shape down here, just these three, which is kind of like an A shape if you think about it leaning backwards. It's also the midpoint between the A and the G if you think about it leaning forwards. So that's a nice, convenient shape that we can just play those three notes. So we're... I'm going to do that just with one finger, muting the ones below it and above it. And then down below we could also add our pinky here. So you can see that's the bottom of this G shape. So if I added these threes and leaned forward, I can add this F right there, which kind of tops it off and gives it that little high end, different high end kind of sound. So if we were to play everything within this position, because this is a major chord construction, you might look at it and say, what are the other major chords? And if you think about it from the position of the C that we looked at last time, we saw that the C is going to be here. And if you think about it from the major, then you have this L shape. So you have this... this, the F and the G, right? The C, the F and the G. That's the 1, 4, 5 from the standpoint of a major chord construction. So you might start practicing those chords and switching between those chords. Which again, is a little tricky because we've only mapped out one chord in this position. But if you said that you're in the F, you can play the F possibly the easiest way is in that A shape, possibly picking this one up down below. And then if we're going to the C shape, the C chord looks like this, which has a D shape to it, so that we talked about last time, boom, boom. I could play that C and then this and this to it. And then we have the one that we haven't looked at thus far, which is the G, which is actually pretty easy to play in this position because it's right here. That's our normal bar chord, the A on this side. So you can kind of switch between those. That might be your starting point since we're basically playing like a major mode to play basically the major chords around it. Remembering that you might want to go to the C before you end up going back home to the F when we're trying to play around the four or in essence in a Lydian mode because that's going to give us that leading tone hopefully to get back to make the F sound like the central point. Now because we haven't really mapped out all of these chord positions in here, it might be easier for us to go to where we know and say if I want to practice around that F, I know my stuff in open position. So maybe I can jump up and practice kind of noodling around the F. That's another strategy we can practice this position and connect it to stuff that we already know like in the open position. So if I'm going to jump into it, let's first think about this note right here. It's going to be open position, jump to that note. Now normally I would play my chord which would look like this with my pinky there. But sometimes my pinky isn't my strongest finger. So maybe if I'm going to jump there, I might jump there like with my ring finger and then try to say what can I play basically around that position if I'm going to jump up there and noodle around within it. Well I can see behind it I have this shape which I can do double stops and then end on that shape. I can see that my most important note is probably that A other than the F right there because that's the third. If I just play those two notes, I get the essence of an F major chord because I have the one and the three even though to get the five I'd have to reach back here. So that's good to know. I also have another C down here but that's kind of hard to reach. I'd have to kind of like mute everything to get to that C and have it play right. I can lean forward, you might try to play the F this way if you had a neck that you can do that but we're trying to lean it back is the point here into our shape to play within basically this shape. So again we might start with our ring double stops and lean back into that shape. I also note that this whole box right here is available to us. This whole line, these two lines it's kind of an interesting shape here because you can say okay this whole thing you can look at it this way is basically fair game. So if I'm starting here I got this whole that we can kind of mess with. So let's think about let's do that and say okay well if I was to kind of noodle around to try to make something somewhat interesting I could start with an F back here trying to play basically in the Lydian mode and then I could start just with that note and then jump up and say okay here I'm up here jump into that note notice I'm playing kind of some notes as I jump back and that's okay because all the open positions are good, all the open strings are good so I'm going to be here and then you might put something else in there like a C back to the F to try to make it lead back home right, something like that we could do the same thing up here and say okay what if I focused on this F well now I've got my A shape right there so I've got this and my F note within it is right here so within that F above it I've got this whole shape which looks like this so I know I have that that's okay for it so I've got this whole box I can always reach my pinky up to here to this F right there which is nice and I've got this box up top so that's nice and I could say okay well the F note is here that the third of this F isn't behind it like this like it normally is because they can't get in tuning so the most important note is right underneath it or the next most important note is the third which is right underneath there but you might as well pick up the fifth often times because it's on top so you've got the third right there that is good and then if I was to reach down below then you have kind of these opposite shapes and sometimes it's useful for people to see the similarities you've got the box here versus the space and the box on this side and then it's converted up so that you have the box going this way over here that's what it used to play in double stop double stop double stop alright so let's do that and I can just basically kind of end it on this A shape so now I'm kind of jumping up to this F and I'm kind of thinking about maybe this box as I jump up so now I'm going to be like alright so if I played like an F see if I can even jump up there and be like right there let's go to a C something like that and then we could of course do that with this one up top I could target this F up there and say okay what do we have around that F so when I'm playing my chord shape for that F I'm probably going to lean back to this shape right so if I'm saying I'm on this F down here I'm leaning back for that A shape to kind of end it off and then I'll be playing around you know this box right here so I could say I'm going to jump up to that and then be like maybe with my ring so you could do the same thing up here and then I'm going to be like alright jumping down to here so something like that and then we could of course try to say okay how can I go from one position to the next so if this was an E if I take this shape and I put it back in place the pivot points that we have then between these two shapes are basically that F right so if I'm on this orange position and I think about if I was playing an F in this position then we could say okay what's the F look like over here we're going to have then this A shape and so that shape right here that we've been playing if I lean it back this way that's when we're hitting this F up top and so if I'm comfortable with that shape I can noodle around it and say okay how can I work around from this shape and then basically convert it forward to say this shape this G shape this G shaped F or possibly to this F up top so if we're back over here over here so what do I have around this shape in the second position well I might say okay there's my third if I'm playing this position the easiest thing to think about is usually my pointer finger so I might say okay I can bring G and then noodle around in this shape right here and then move my pointer finger up to get to this shape which I can then lead up this way or this way right so I can say alright if I'm going like this pointer finger I can take it back and I have this whole box right here and that leads me up to in here which is basically my A shape or G shape leaning forward I can lean forward that way or back down this way so if I'm so if I'm here I can try to lead it back that way so we can kind of basically noodle around between those two and then of course we can do the same concept trying to find these pivot points as we work up and down the neck so now I've got this F leaning forward into that A shape if I take that F and lean it backwards we're leaning into basically like a C shape back here so now we're going alright C shape kind of looks like this we can play this which is the base of it is that D shape leads into this C shape so if we're going from this C shaped F which is basically in our position number one we can say if I'm going to noodle around there and I'm going to try to pivot around to get to this A C shaped kind of thing and then maybe we go from there and say how can we get from there up to like pointing at this F up top it's like okay well how can I do that if I'm on like let's do another one of these hold on a second what did I do undo I don't know what I did I think I deleted a yellow put this here and so if we're in if we're if I'm pointing at this F with a C shape which means I'm going to be like in this position so I'm going to say there's that F with my C shape and then I'm going to turn that around into this A well if I'm on you know this C shape like that then what do I have within here well this is my number one shape so I can go back to my pointer down here which is usually the easiest thing to kind of start off with and then just lead that into this one possibly and so that brings me back to my A shape which brings me to the same point that we were at before and that leads me into this shape right here so I might have something like this here's my C shape and then I'm on my pointer here and that can just lead that up to back to this F again which leads me into this shape so now I'm leaning forward on my A shape which I could so there's my F right there now if I wanted to bring it up I can bring it up to this shape so the top half of the G shape or something like that right I'm just trying to look for okay how can I pivot around these pivot points and then the next one if I went back would be like this basically this D shape generally if I leaned that back so that's the central point between this D shape over here and this C shaped so if I leaned it back to this purple position then so we have our normal F here's my F right there there's my leaning forward shape within this position so I might say okay what can I noodle around and try to find a pathway going forward from this position I might obviously just take my pointer finger and move it up somewhere into the red that's going to bring me back into my position here maybe I'll bring it down to here build my C shape up this way which will take me up to this point then turn it around to this A right so and bring it forward just see okay how could I make like a line that goes through these areas right so here's my F here's my pointer finger that's usually the easiest one to move I can move that into probably my most familiar shape and then I can make my shape down here so now I'm in this kind of D shape and once I'm there make that into my C shape going from here here here I'm holding it like a C this time but I'm trying to mute everything I'm not holding down and so that takes me into my C shape and then converts me into my A shape and this shape my pointer fingers up top so I can work around that takes me up here which I can then build this shape there's my F right there I want to lead it up to that F there we have it up top so we're just trying to find lines to go through and then of course we can take it all the way back to the open position and say how can I go back to the open position which is obviously pivoting around this F and so I'll play it basically this way we'll have the same kind of issue here so if I play it this way then my finger that's easiest to kind of start this process in on is up top right now my finger is up top here and that will lead me to most like I could move anything by the way I could move like and do other things with other fingers but I'm just saying that just easiest one to start with is probably where the pointers line so if I did it this way then my pointer is going to be up top there and I can possibly move it into this shape and say okay I'm going to move it down to where I get to that D maybe so maybe I'm going from here and I'm like okay and so now I'm leaning forward to this D so I kind of just noodled around to get to basically that D and then once we're in this D now my finger my pointer finger is going to be right here again so again leading that forward is probably the easiest thing to do into the next shape so I just basically walked that up to here so now I'm in this shape now my pointer finger is right here I can kind of noodle around within the position that I'm probably most familiar with here until maybe I want to reach up to this position again reaching up to that F so that I might do that and so then I'm reaching up to this F and then so now my pointer finger is actually down on this F still so I could walk that forward if I wanted to walk that into this position which is going to basically walk me into basically this A shaped position here so I could say okay how am I going to walk that in we'll say that we're going to go so now I've played this shape and now I leaned it back instead of leaning it forward to this F and now my pointer finger is on that F and so that could lead me to this shape so in any case I know I'm doing that really kind of slowly and messily but that's the idea that you could take these shapes and kind of connect them out and say and you don't always have to target like the F you can obviously do this with any chord that you're playing within it but you can basically try to use these anchoring notes which then tie into the anchoring shapes which are the anchoring chord shapes which tie into the anchoring position shape in terms of the scale shape which you can then use to hopefully help build your dexterity and options as you basically move up and down the neck this way and I think you do that by analyzing slowly which finger I'm going to move from one position to the next and just know that you're kind of safe as long as you don't hit the lava at least to start off with until you learn when to hit the lava and then you can basically move from one shape to the next so that you can switch your visualization of what is happening as you're going from one position to the next so you're going from one box to the next anchoring yourself in eventually realizing that there are no boxes