Yesterday I said I was going to show a methodology I use to open up creatively.
It’s the practice of Zone Isolation.
More specifically, isolating your playing within one of the 5 zones.
Before we jump in, let’s recap what we have uncovered up until now: Layer 1: Roots
- the FretGrid is an underlying pattern. It provides an organized outlay across the entire fretboard.
- The FretGrid is transitive across ALL 12 tones.
- Zone Isolation (<========== discussing today =======)
What I haven’t told you is that [FG] is effectively a mnemonic peg system.
The mnemonic peg system, invented by Henry Herdson is a memory aid that works by creating mental associations between two concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will later be applied to to-be-remembered information.
It is a way of “layering” musical information (scales, chords, triads…) relative to the 5 zones.
But just like the yin and yang, kaizen and muda, peanut butter and jelly…
The FretGrid is both the whole and it’s individual parts.
Contained in each zone are all the notes needed to build scales and chords. So if you really think about it… you essentially have 5 different ways of playing the same exact scale. As well as 5 different ways of playing the same chord.
So it is equally important to spend time working on zones 1 through zone 5 as a whole…
As it is to focus entirely on ONE zone, and all of the musical information you can “layer” on that ONE zone.
When you focus on zone isolation you can really start thinking in terms of “relative space” or what those in the know call “economy of playing.”
I’ll talk more about economy of playing later on.
For right now I just want you to understand that when you limit yourself to only thinking relative to one zone, you will start to see chords or scales that otherwise you never thought about.
Until you get this issue sorted, you will ONLY be thinking of chords and scales from one reference point.
You’ll be forever locked in seeing them this way.
tinylesson: Zone Isolation
Set 20 minute timer. Tune you guitar.
The key of this exercise is to use 5 zone cards and 12 tone cards and let the note cards do the heavy lifting.
Lay your 5 zone cards in front of you so you can quickly reference.
Then at random draw 5 tone cards to pair with each of the zone card.
For example: (tone cards drawn: G, B, C, F#, D#)
- play all G roots - in G zone 1
- play all B roots - in B zone 2
- play all C roots - in C zone 3
- play all F# roots - in F# zone 4
- play all D# roots - in D# zone 5
Once you have gone through 5 tones in 5 zones, draw 5 new tone cards.
And repeat the process for the remainder of this session.
Set your metronome to 80 BPM. Play 1 note every 2 clicks.