3NS: The Three Fundamental Finger Patterns

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

The Three Fundamental Finger Patterns

Reminder of the main ideas

In the last article, we talked about some of the basic observations regarding guitar fingering, and listed three essential sequences of diatonic scales and how we play them on one single string. We shall name them by their intervallic distance as SW (Semi-Whole), WS (Whole-Semi), and WW (Whole-Whole). Applying the intervals to the natural scale, we will see that there are several scale degrees to which each pattern can be applied. The SW pattern starts at the third and the seventh degrees, WS starts at the second and sixth degrees, and the three degrees that WW pattern rests on would be the first, fourth, and the fifth. Sounds a bit confusing? Let’s interpret the above concept in a more graphical perspective.

Understanding the repeating sequence

The most important point to memorize here is the position of the semitone. As mentioned in the last post, there are only two places in a natural diatonic scale that contains a semitone between two scale degrees, being 3-4 and 7-1. Therefore, with either SW or WS, we only need to look at the placement of the semitone to memorize the fingerings, i.e. 3-4 or 7-1 between index finger and middle finger for SW pattern or between pinky finger and ring finger for WS pattern, and leaving anything else the WW pattern.

If we list them out, we will see a very interesting sequence. The three fingering patterns repeat in groups, listed from the player’s point of view of the guitar: three sets of WW, followed by two sets of SW and then two sets of WS, listed below.

WS 1x34 x2

SW 12x4 x2

WW 1x2x4 x3

It is worth mentioning that this pattern extend into seven strings instead of six, and repeating itself over and over again, regardless of the playing position, so memorize the pattern below and you will be set with scales!

Below is the full list. The numbers represent degrees of the natural scale, and the symbol X represents a chromatic note/semitone. Each line is directly connected to the line above, e.g., the last grid of line 5 is followed up immediately by the first grid of line 4.

For the purpose of demonstrating the sequence itself, we are looking at the pattern with perfect fourth interval between each line, ignoring the major third between the second and the third string for now.

For those who are more used to reading tab images, here’s the graphic demonstrations of the chart above.

As you can see from the above two images, the sequence repeats itself when we reach the end of line one. Also, do notice that when we approach the seventh degree placed on the index finger, which is the first appearance of the WS pattern, we are shifting playing position to the right by one fret, and vice versa moving down the scale, as indicated by the Roman numeral I and II above the first chart. Therefore, if line 7 is to repeat above line 1, the first grid with the fifth scale degree would appear above the second scale degree on line 1, which is one fret to the right of the first appearance of line 7.

Applying to the guitar fretboard

Back to the fretboard. Because of the iterative nature of the sequence, we can use them anywhere on the fretboard. For applications where the scale is consistent throughout a long period of time, you may only need to find the tonic or a familiar scale degree and map out on six of seven lines of the sequence on a specific position mindfully. For example, if you were to play in G major around the fifth fret of fourth string, then you may consider the following sequences. Scale tonic circled in red

Look closer at the positional change between the second string and the third string. Since those two strings are a major third apart, a semitone short compared to the other ones, we need to compensate this by shifting our playing position appropriately, one fret to the right when moving up to the second string, or a fret to the left when moving down to the third string. For visual learners, it might be helpful to consider this as a continental shift or earthly rift of the fretboard. If the positional shift happens along with the shift of the sequence, you need to move your left hand two fret at a time, a bit of a stretch. If uncomfortable, you can always move the last note from the third string to the second string, so the sequence is not exactly three note per string, as shown below.

Upon facing occasional chromatic alternations, seeing that we have the 3NS sequence memorized by the scale degrees, we can simply apply some fundamental theory knowledge to find the position of the altered note. For instance, if we were to find the b3 scale degree from the sequence above, we can picture the graph below.

The first string is likely your mindset when finding the b3 degree - you recall the position of the third scale degree, and looking one fret to the left. This process might take few seconds at first, but once you get familiar with the procedure, it will become an automatic reaction without having to look for a degree reference. The fourth string is an example looking for the #2 degree with similar mindset but looking to the right rather than the left. If it helps at the beginning, you can also think of this chromatic alternation as the note between the second and the third degree of the scale as shown on the sixth string.

Try getting out of the fixed-positional way of thinking, as it leads you to anything but a virtuoso, and experiment with moving around on the fretboard freely. To understand how to apply the Three-Note-per-String scale system when a larger positional shift is required, continue onto the next section of the series, The Horizontal Transitions.