Unlocking the Fretboard & The Art of Fingering

Even if the guitarist knows what notes must be played and where to find them on the fingerboard, there remains what fingering works well for each passage-but will this fingering allow the player to move with accurate efficiency? The fret board does have an easily recognizable arrangement of half steps and once that truly is understood, the fret board becomes almost as graphically representative as the piano keyboard. This text focuses on this underlying principle and develops it into a system encompassing the horizontal as well as vertical methods of learning the fingerboard and how these two conceptual disciplines are interrelated. The diligent student finds insight into why editors and performers have varying opinions regarding the fingering of identical pieces. Opinions-and fingerings-are not engraved in stone. Some editors finger music to ease performance, some for tone considerations. In some cases there may be only one way to finger a passage due other considerations-a plethora of reasons.