The path itself is a guitar learning system. Below are systems within the path's framework. Shape Connect is complete, Tone Mix has one session and all of the others are in queue to go live.
This is a fail-proof system designed specifically for learning to strum & switch chords.
To help you accomplish this, we have a plan. The system includes all of the essential 'open string, first position' chords to help you get your rhythm playing going. It follows a specific sequence, challenging fingers in specific ways, on two tracks [One & Two - both in two waves].
Chords are the consequence of correct travel. To end at our destinations [chords], we program the exact transitions between chords. Chord changes are the action in between fretted chords. When this traveling happens successfully, chords happen. Shape Connect helps you program motion, through space, in time, and sync it to an engine.
Track 1 is built for absolute success. Track 2 has more challenging changes, yet some easy ones too.
If you do just the first changes of Connect [Em-G6 and Em-E] while strumming without stopping, you’ve proven that you can play rhythm guitar. It's just a matter of making more connections; of making more synchronizations. As a student, prep work for Shape Connect would be pre-chord sounds.
This system provides simple experiments with tone sets. We start with a single tone exercise...A Tone Alone.
This is a mapping system that can get us functional in all keys quickly. And again, even though we are using patterns, we eventually move beyond the patterns to knowing what tones mean to tones, in specific settings, and to terms of personal musical expression, rather than grids or patterns (we may prefer 'thinking' in colors, people, emotions, or moods or images, etc.). There are 7 scale forms. For every key, they go in the same order [C-B♭-A-G-F-E-D – same as CAGED chord system, plus 2 more, since the Major scale system is a heptatonic system]. One of them has to be at or near the nut. Once we determine this, the patterns cycle in the same order. We can think of the lowest version as the heel (bread) or origin. Since there are 7 forms, each of those are their own heel. There are 2 solo heels (A & E), but they can still be moved up. A & E just aren’t an absolute origin for any of the 12 tones, except themselves.
This system is designed to show you exactly how chord forms work in standard tuning. You will learn hundreds of new chords and how they work. There are 5 chord shapes in standard tuning that can act as a framework for every other known chord.
They are C-A-G-E-D. This is the 'CAGED' system. Once we know where the components live in each, we modify & add tones to create other chord types. Learning this system can act as a 'scaffolding' type experience. Once known, it can be "removed" / "erased". Enter pure knowledge ("this is C, this is C, this is C..."). A thing is a thing, not because of another thing.
This type of knowledge is priceless for understanding our board and making it work for us, in any setting. We will learn how each of the forms move up the fretboard in the order of most common usage: E & A first, then D, C, G. And, modify them to create a plethora of other chords. E & A, D are similar; C & G are similar.
This chord/scale system uses the octave structures in standard tuning for the basis of exploration.
We are using them to improvise & build melodies/chords. We are using a set of maps and our imagination to create music. By relying on our own process of discovery, we get to know our fretboards, really well, at the same time we learn what our resonant musical inclinations are [personal style building].In each octave [there are 7], we play the Major pentatonic & the Major scale in each octave, then build a Major and minor type mode in each. We use Numera (Faulkner term for Root = 0) and build & use different tone groups [modes]. We train, build chords, play scales, and go creative.
This mini-system is a parallel track to using CAGED for understanding our fretboard and how chords can be formed. The goal here is to expand our chord catalog and to understand how chords can move up the board. We are getting to know our fretboard. We are taking a triad [3 tone chord – we can also do this with 4 tone chords] and playing 3 versions of it on the same set of strings [the linear part]; converting a chord to a different version of itself, higher on the board [re-voicing it].
