This is (hopefully) a simplistic system to help you visualise the the fretboard.

Essentially, by learning two one-octave shapes for the major scale – one that starts on the first finger and ascends the fretboard and one that starts on the little finger and descends the fretboard (uses notes on frets behind the starting fret) – we’re able to visualise all the intervals on the fretboard. We can then use this knowledge to tweak these intervals to create every possible scale, chord and arpeggio we could ever need.

You might be wondering how we can cover all the fretboard with 2 small one-octave shapes? Well it’s all to do with how the guitar is a reasonably shape friendly instrument.

Below I have an “A” note on the 7th fret of the D String –

There are all kinds of ways that I can build scales around it. EG 3 note per string, CAGED, All on one string, 4 note per string.

There are all kinds of ways of mapping it out, but let’s just ascend using a shape that starts on the first finger and ascends the fretboard (uses frets the same or higher than we start on)

We’ll get this shape; We’re going to call it Shape 1 – it starts on the first finger and ascends the fretboard

This shape has a forward diagonal quality to it. If you drew a straight line connecting the root notes (“1” on the diagram) it looks like a forward slash (/)

We can then use this exact same shape to descend from our original A like so – notice how the shape has shifted slightly because it’s no longer crossing the G-B strings where the interval is different.

Using just one pattern (slightly tweaked when crossing the G-B) we’ve created shape that travels Up and In (North-Eastern) and Down and Back (South-Western) from the original root.

This will already cover a lot of ground, as long as you know the names of the notes on the fretboard, you can move this to any key.

I would take a break now to practice this position. Practice learning the number on each step too, this will be helpful for when you want to convert it into other scales and modes.

As I said before, this system requires two postions. Let’s look and building a shape out of the frets behing the starting fret; this will be shape 2 –

Again, practice playing this shape and memorise the location of the intervals as well as the sound of the scale.

Lets use this shape to descend as well, notice that the shape completes after 4 strings, so there wont be enough strings to complete the decending version in this position.

For reference, here it is starting on the A note on the 3rd string, s you can see the shape on the lower 4 strings:

This shape resembles a backslash (\) and travels in the mirror direction of shape 1:

Using these 2 shapes, and knowing the interval locations and how to tweak them when they cross the G and B string, we can play fluently in any direction from any root note:

All you need to be able to do is quickly see your root notes, visualise these shapes, practice connecting them and merging them, and learn the interval placements so you can tweak them.

Here are the two shapes shown starting on each string so that you can see how to adjust them for when they cross the G-B strings:

Shape 1 starting on every string :

Shape 2 on every string set: