Exploring New Approaches to Guitar Fretboard Navigation

Exploring New Approaches to Guitar Fretboard Navigation

My Deep Rooted Frustrations Involving Fretboard Navigation

When I was about 16 years old, I began learning guitar and started taking lessons from a fantastic teacher. I started out with common songs like Stairway to Heaven and Blackbird. I learned some solos and intros like Little Wing and Red House, and I really thought Hey, I'm Unstoppable. I studied music theory and key signatures, and my guitar teacher explained to me that people like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page don’t play their solos note by note—they navigate the fretboard and create solos based on ideas because they know the shapes of scales.

So, I began to study major scales, pentatonic scales, blues scales. My teacher gave me fretboard diagrams and encouraged me to study the 12-bar blues and improvise over his comping. But this was sort of the beginning of the end for me. My solos were corny, and although I could find the dots on the fretboard, I struggled to tie it all together. This wasn’t the only reason I lost interest in playing guitar, but the introduction to scale patterns and fretboard navigation felt discouraging. It became a major roadblock between where I was—getting comfortable with agility and dexterity to play and memorize songs—and where I wanted to be: understanding how to put together my own ideas and navigate the fretboard freely.

Revisiting Traditional Guitar Methods

I never completely gave up playing guitar, but I mostly became interested in other instruments and put a halt to developing my guitar skills for a very long time—until a few years ago. Just after my daughter was born, I decided I was going to tackle learning the CAGED system and those pesky fretboard dot patterns that had defeated me so many years ago. Again, this turned out to be a dead end for me. I’m not saying it will never be valuable, but I began thinking: maybe there’s another way for me to learn to navigate the fretboard that doesn’t rely on CAGED or scale patterns in the conventional way I had been trying to learn.

This led me to ask myself: Is this the only way people have learned to navigate the fretboard? What other approaches could I try? One immediate thought was that in the 1950s, when the guitar became popular, people typically learned from method books, like the ones published by Mel Bay. So, I decided to try studying something like that. I know this isn’t for everyone. About 10 years ago, a friend asked me to give her son guitar lessons. Among other things, like learning songs off YouTube tutorials, I bought him Alfred’s Guitar Method which was something I worked through as a beginning guitar student. He was so discouraged and bored by note reading that he began crying during the lesson. But, on another occasion, an adult friend asked me for lessons and specifically said she wanted to learn to read music and use a basic method book, the same way she had learned violin. I bought her Alfred’s Method, and we both had a great time reading through the book together.

A Personal Approach to Fretboard Mastery and Why I’m Rethinking the CAGED System

So here I am today, back at it trying to learn to navigate the guitar fretboard. At the moment, I’m studying Book One of Mey Bay's Modern Guitar Method, and I’ve also started working through A Modern Method for Guitar by William Leavitt, a Berklee Press book.

I just had this idea that maybe traditional note reading could be something that works for me.  I know, music theory, and I've studied classical music on other instruments.  Furthermore I do have the burning desire to know where all the notes are not just where all the shapes are.

Not even very far into these books I feel like it’s pretty hard, and it’s very different from learning songs off YouTube and studying patterns, but I think there’s merit in it. Sometimes hard is good.  The actual notes are starting to stick in my head, and this could really complement my understanding of fretboard patterns and the CAGED system. I’ve also started exploring other approaches for learning the fretboard and have come up with a whole list of different approaches.

I’m not saying the CAGED system or scale pattern approaches to navigating the fretboard are bad—they’re valuable tools. But they’re not the end-all solution. A combination of approaches may be what finally gets me over the learning hump I’ve struggled with throughout my journey with the guitar.

Conclusion: Finding Your Path

Learning the guitar fretboard is a deeply personal journey. For some, traditional methods like note reading provide clarity and structure, while others thrive using visual patterns like CAGED. The key is experimentation—combining different methods until you find the one (or mix) that resonates with you. If you're struggling with the same roadblocks I faced, I encourage you to explore unconventional approaches, revisit traditional methods, and above all, keep playing. Every guitarist’s journey is unique, and the fretboard is a landscape waiting to be discovered.