Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Hello all!

Watching Mr. Tomo play I often hear him stress the importance of using chord tones rather than scales so I started using chordtones instead of whole scales and it has drastically improved my abilities but I still have troubles remembering where my scale degrees are in different keys, does anyone have any good practice routines for memorizing them in different keys?

Hi Dominic, what worked for me and recommend giving it a try is finding the root of a key on all strings up to at least the 12th fret. For example, find all the C from 1st to 12th fret... starting from low E string then A, D and so on. Practice it till you become comfortable doing it ascending and descending.

After that, the 3 and 5 are just around the root. Above it is usually the 5, below it is the 4 and to the left of 4 is the 3, to the left of 3 is the b3 (minor), to the left of root is the 7 then b7, 2 frets to the right of root is the 9. Just adjust those when on the G string... it takes a little practice but if you can quickly find the root, the rest is easy.

Here is Tomo's comment:

"Thanks so much for subscribing to my Guitar Wisdom. If you work on them slowly without memorizing them, you will start to recognize intervals very clearly! Slow down and repeat often -- that is the key. Learn triads in depth. Learn triads over any chord progressions that you enjoy! Learn scales and chords. Then go to the style sections of Guitar Wisdom to hear all that you have learned in songs/music."

Hey Dominik....I'd like to share a tool my high school guitar teacher gave me some 40 years ago. If you memorize the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes in each scale...you're well on your way.....

Take a look here....this is a copy of his sheet......

https://sites.google.com/ericruddphotography.com/guitar-information/home

I recommend memorizing it in reverse....as a circle of fifths, as you can build extension chords more easily.

Hope this helps.

Eric

Sorry, Dom. Let me see if I can fix the link.

Ok...Dominik, I think I changed the permission of the link above to public. Let me know if you have trouble accessing, or if the information there doesn't make sense.