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If there is such a thing as a “Holy Grail” of great guitar playing, it lies within mastering the five octave positions and how they correlate with intervals. THE HOLY GRAIL OF GUITAR MASTERY In a previous lesson, I shared with you a kit for making your own musical compass, which is a handy little [...]

In the last lesson, I introduced the note wheel and showed you how it can be used to label all the notes on the guitar. Now I want to show you how something called “intervals” relate to the note wheel to create what I call the “Musical Compass” Intervals are kind of like the inch markers on a ruler. They allow you to measure the distance between notes.

My teaching system involves using something I refer to as the note wheel, the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, arranged in chromatic order within a circle. In the “Hello Guitar” Method, this system is used quite a bit because it makes it a whole lot easier to understand how to construct various scales, chords, observe intervals, and even transpose music from one key to another. Below is an example of the note wheel. Take a look at just the names of the notes;

The guitar has a four octave range, starting with Low E on the open sixth string and moving up through Middle E on the second fret of the fourth string, High E on the open first string, Upper E on the twelfth fret of the first string, and through the upper notes beyond the twelfth fret. Here’s an illustration of what this looks like on the music staff using the natural notes.

Given any note or chord, there are only five positions on the guitar neck from which it can be played. This is an incredibly useful tool considering that there are over 3500 chords and over 550 different scales that can be played on the guitar. Yet, everything you will ever do on the guitar boils down to understanding these five simple positions.

“I have students all the time that ask me things like “How do you know when to strum?” and “How do you develop good timing?”
Even for an experienced musician and guitar teacher, rhythm is still one of the most challenging things to teach. That’s because, while it may take just a few minutes to explain the basics concepts of rhythm, it can take years to really develop your sense of rhythm to the point where it becomes second nature.
Here’s a few tips on how to develop a good sense of rhythm;…”