"I have a VERY basic question though: when you say "do scales" are you saying that one should be able to readily name each note? I do scales by ear in any key without problem but if I made myself learn each note by name I'd be back at the beginning post."

No problem, Ebbie. It may take a couple of days of concentration, but that's a small price to pay for what you gain. If you can play scales by ear, then you're already ahead of the game.

Here's a system that one of my students worked out to help him learn where the notes are on a guitar. He'd been an engineer at Boeing, was in his seventies, and recently retired   He had never played a musical instrument before and figured now was the time. He wanted to learn a bit of classic, some folk, anything he could pick up, so I started him the way I usually do with students who are game to do it this way:   a little classic technique for openers.

He was having a bit of a problem relating the notes on the page with where they were on the guitar, so he turned his engineering-oriented mind (lotsa numbers) to the problem and came up with a neat system. By each note, he wrote a number that looked like a fraction. He broke it down for me. The top number was the string, the bottom number was the fret. Neat! Then, as he played the notes, he'd say them. "C, D, E, F," etc., until he had it down pat and didn't need the numbers anymore.

Anyway, you may already know where C, D, E and all that are on the fingerboard, but just in case you don't, here's a C scale in the first position (within the first four frets and using open strings) using his system   

(C)5/3 – (D)4/0 – (E)4/2 – (F)4/3 – (G)3/0 – (A)3/2 – (C)2/1

To extend it to cover the whole first position, (E)6/0 – (F)6/1 – (G)6/3 – (A)5/0 – (B)5/2 – (C)5/3 - (D)4/0 – (E)4/2 – (F)4/3 – (G)3/0 – (A)3/2 – (C)2/1 – (D)2/3 – (E)1/0 – (F)1/1 – (G)1/3, and you can take it back down again or just generally goof around with it.

I know this looks pretty messy, but it's really fairly simple. If we could sit down together with a couple of guitars, I could show it to you in about ten minutes.

By the way, standard left-hand fingering for any style of guitar when playing scales or single-note passages (or bass runs, which are just partial scales) is a simple open, one, two, three, four. That is, notes on the first fret played with the first finger (index), on the second string with the second finger (middle), and so on. Pretty straightforward.

Just bear with me, I'll get you there.

Once you've learn this, you know where all of the "white key" notes are (referring, of course, to the piano) in the first position on the fingerboard. That's for starters. As you move around the Circle of Fifths (good stuff on this link), with each step you have to add either a sharp or a flat (depending on which way you're going) to keep the scale structure consistent. For the bewildered, to sharp a note, take it up one fret, to flat it, take it down one.

But that's for another day. Just get the C scale down and you're on your way.

I hope this a) isn't totally bewildering; and b), actually helps.

Don Firth