This approach is basically the same mental model as Adam Kadmon's Guitar Grimoire but with extra steps and music-agnostic vocabulary.
Fretboard Memorisation with Modular Arithmetic
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Re: Fretboard Memorisation with Modular Arithmetic
#12If you are learning the guitar and are interested in music theory (or meta-learning), one resource I cannot recommend enough is Absolutely Understand Guitar by Scotty West[1]. These are old video lectures from 1999 which have since been uploaded to YouTube. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pX...
Top comment is "Anyone in 2026 here from Reddit?".
Re: Fretboard Memorisation with Modular Arithmetic
#13As someone who also used to overthink memorizing the fretboard: this is a bad idea. You should strive to just plainly memorize the names of all of the notes, the relevant scale and arpeggio patterns, etc, without any kind of tricks or "system" (no, not CAGED either). This is the only path to real fluency; imagine having a neat system of remembering what each English word means and having to go through it every time y…
> the relevant scale and arpeggio patterns, etc, That phrase is smuggling in a LOT of work that systems like CAGED help to simplify. I say this as someone who has played guitar for decades and slept on CAGED for too long.
100% agree. CAGED is extremely underrated. The starting premise is so simple, that most intermediate players go "yeah, yeah, sure...that's cool but it's not very insightful". It's when you start hanging all the basic (and probably more) scale/arpeggio patterns off it that it starts to become more and more valuable.
Re: Fretboard Memorisation with Modular Arithmetic
#14While cellos, violins, etc. don't technically have frets, the notes are of course in the same layout as instruments that do have frets, so this same method works. (It's funny how different instruments live in their own worlds. Once I showed a movable scale fingering diagram for guitar to a cello player and they had no idea what I was talking about, even though the cello has the same kind of patterns, as would any par…
The notes are in a similar layout, but violin and cello strings are tuned to fifths, where guitar and bass guitar strings are tuned to fourths. The fingering patterns for scales and shapes of arpeggios/cords are going to be frustratingly close but different for anyone jumping into (or out of) the orchestra pit on a whim.
Yes indeed. Sorry if I was unclear in my wording...I meant:
* Fretted cellos would have the same fingering positions as unfretted cellos (frets are placed where the notes are, they don't set where the notes are).
* All parallel-stringed instruments have modular fingering patterns like this (though not exactly the same fingering patterns, if their string interval differs) so this is a good principle to try no matter your instrument.
Learning both guitar and cello is kind of like learning both QWERTY and Dvorak. Same intellectual principle, whole different muscle memory.