Going Round in Circles
We'll now elaborate on some of the ideas we looked at in the previous lesson.
First of all, we'll move everything up a couple of frets to eliminate those troublesome open string notes. We now have five movable shapes, at least two of which can be played with only minimal risk of injury.1
From now on we'll use the symbols [6], [5], [4], [3] & [2] to denote these shapes. The number indicates the string on which the ‘red’ root appears. Notice that [6] can also be written as [1].
As alluded to above, most of these shapes are fairly impractical if we include all the notes. So, for practising, I would suggest the following forms. Feel free to come up with your own, though. All that really matters is that they contain the notes 1, 3 and 5 at least once. The hollow boxes in shape [3] are just to show where the roots lie - you don't need to play them.2 Also, feel free to omit either root from shape [2] if you find it difficult or uncomfortable.3
We can extend the notation that we just described by adding the fret-number of the lowest ‘red’ root as a subscript, so a simple I-IV-I-V-I progression in G could be expressed as:
[6]3 [5]3 [6]3 [2]3 [6]3
Which translates to something like this:
It's now time to annoy any spouse, partners, neighbours, siblings etc. who might be nearby by practising the following progressions until you can play them without really having to think about what you're doing.
1) [6]3 [5]3 [6]3 [2]3 [6]3
2) [5]3 [4]3 [5]3 [6]3 [5]3
3) [4]3 [3]3 [4]3 [5]3 [4]3
4) [3]3 [2]4 [3]3 [4]3 [3]3
5) [2]4 [6]4 [2]4 [3]3 [2]4
For bonus points, pick a key and try to start each exercise using the chord of the same name, moving to the appropriate fret for each one. For even more points, change the order in which you do the exercises to minimise jumping backwards and forwards along the fretboard.4
I really wanted to keep the text in these articles to a minimum but this is really at the heart of what I'm trying to get across so please humour me while I mention a couple of things that I think are quite important.
First of all, I want you to think of the shapes we've looked at as being arranged in a circle:
Notice how the exercises above can all be described by the same movement in reference to this circle:
- Pick a shape and play it
- Play the clockwise neighbour of the first shape
- Play the original shape
- Play the anti-clockwise neighbour
- Play the original shape
I've included [1] here as it's more natural to think of moving between [2] and [1] and between [5] and [6]. Try to think of them as being synonymous though.5
In the exercises, the roots generally remained on the same fret. There are two important exceptions:
- When moving from [3] to [2] we had to move the root up by one fret.
- When we move from [2] to [3] we had to move the root down by one fret.
Similar adjustments must be made whenever the root moves between strings 2 & 3.6 The line between [2] and [3] in the diagram, together with the plus and minus signs on either side of it, are an attempt at representing this (maybe think of the line as a sort of toll-gate with a refundable charge of one fret).
Any chord progression can be described in terms of movements within this circle. Once this ‘formula’ has been determined, it can be realised in five different ways, each starting on a different shape. This is a very powerful concept. Understanding this and becoming familiar with the relationship within7 and between the shapes themselves makes playing a progression8 in different positions and/or keys feel natural and less likely to inspire fear or anguish.
Okay, so how about another couple of exercises to finish things up?. First, starting with an open E shape, keep moving around the ‘shape-circle’ in a clockwise direction as follows.
[6]0 [5]0 [4]0 [3]0 [2]1 [6]1 [5]1 [4]1 [3]1 [2]2 [6]2 [5]2 [4]2 [3]2 [2]3 [6]3 [5]3 [4]3 [3]3 [2]4 [6]4 [5]4 [4]4 [3]4 [2]5 [6]5 etc.
Which could be voiced like the following (I've included the ‘missing’ notes greyed out so it's easier to follow movement of the shape across the fretboard).
etc.
You'll notice that, once you get past the open shapes9, you're just repeating the same sequence of five shapes, climbing by a fret with every repetition.
The final exercise is simply to do the same thing in reverse. I.e. choose one of the shapes and play it in a reasonably high position before making your way around the ‘circle’ in an anti-clockwise direction until you feel that you've done enough or you reach the open E shape. If this is unclear, just play the long sequence of shapes above in reverse order.