This post is part of the Three-Note-Per-String (3NS) Scale System series
1.Introduction 2.Ideology behind the 3NS Scale System 3.The Three Fundamental Finger Patterns 4.The Horizontal Transitions 5.Arpeggios
Ideology behind the 3NS System
What is special about 3NS system comparing to the CAGED system or others?
NOTE: this is mainly an explanation of the why behind this system, if you want to get to the actual learning process right away, skip the follow content and go directly to The Three Fundamental Finger Patterns.
From my experience with various level of guitar players and enthusiastic, one of the discouragement from learning an instrument is sustained repetitive exercises without much improvement. Many youth and even adults turn away from music because of boring exercises that are constantly drilling into their ears. We want to produce good result FAST. We want to memorize as little as possible before making music. Of course, after all, we want to play music, not scales. Therefore, rather than showing a whole list of things to memorize, and spend few weeks have them imprinted into our brain before even touching our instrument in a constructed way, we would definitely prefer memorizing only few essential ideas, put the book away, and immediately experiment those on our instrument.
The 3NS system accomplishes this very intention by scattering any positional structure into patterns of possible finger combination on each string, then combining the per-string pattern into a general sequence that is applicable to any string and position. The only drawback of this system is a wider stretch of two consecutive whole notes on some strings comparing to the other systems where a major third between index and pinky finger is generally avoided. Yet when we really dig into any performance in any genre, be it rock, metal, jazz, or fingerstyle acoustic, we can always find stretches that may go over 4 semitones for the left hand, so it really isn’t much of a concern. With good left hand technique, stretch of two consecutive whole notes is not a big deal.
Observation on Finger Positions
Within the most played positions on a guitar, which in my personal judgement would be under 15th fret for electric guitar or 12th fret for acoustic, our hands are most comfortable when assigned one fret per finger. Therefore in any natural diatonic scale, since we don’t have consecutive semitones, there are only three combinations of fingering on a single string under any circumstances. The fingers are labeled from Index to Pinky as 1 2 3 4 in the list below.
1.Semitone followed by a Whole Tone, using the finger 124. 2.Whole Tone followed by a Semitone, using the finger 134. 3.Whole Tone followed by another Whole Tone, using the finger 124.
Since each string covers three notes, each string is a fourth apart in scale degrees. Also, because of the standard tuning of guitar, tuned mainly in perfect fourth, with the exception of a major third between second and third string, minimum movement of hand position is required going from one string to the next.
On the other hand (pun intended), we will experience simplicity if we unify our picking patterns to be identical for each set of strings. Rather than having two notes to pick on one string, it is way easier to know that we have three notes on every string, thus reducing any ambiguity for alternation of picking finger/direction.
That concludes the basic ideas of the 3NS scale system, we shall look into the details in the next post, The Three Fundamental Finger Patterns.