The patterns are different on different string sets. You don't need to learn DEF with the same pattern again, but you do need to learn all the ways of playing CDE
But then the pattern across strings is also "relative" and only depends on the guitar tuning you're playing. For instance in the standard tuning, two neighboring strings are always a perfect fourth apart (five frets) unless they're the G-B strings in which case they're a major third apart (four frets). So if you know where you'd be playing a note on one string, that same note is just five frets back or four frets back on the next one. Which is again a totally "relative" framing that works for any individual note the same way. You can even figure out where you'd have to play if the tuning was non-standard. These patterns only have to be practiced a little bit, there's not really any need to learn them from scratch.
(If anything, I would want a "guitar learning" app to automatically come up with its own exercises, similar to ear training apps for learning to recognize intervals - and using something like a spaced repetition approach to evaluate how the user is doing.)
This is why learning guitar when I was younger was so difficult to me; people just presented things like "you have to learn these 5 scale patterns" but they didn't really go into why, it was just "memorize this stuff and then you'll be good!", but I hate rote memorization without understanding the underlying principles. I'm old and didn't have the internet back then so I was just learning from various books or friends and it was slow going, but I still see things like this presented in tons of Youtube videos today.
I've since gone back and learned a bit of music theory as an adult and it's been super helpful understanding the underlying principles so I can work things out vs. having to just memorize things without understanding why they work.
I think then you can go practice the various scale patterns and get good at them with the knowledge that you can always work out the scale from first principles if you need to.
Different strokes for different folks though I guess, I'm sure there's an argument to be made for not overwhelming folks with too much theory out of the gate. Not sure if I had started with a bunch of theory if I would have stuck with it when I was younger.
Nearly every popular-music guitar lesson series in the world teaches the five various pentatonic patterns--the few exceptions being those that focus on classical guitar or non-western music. You might find this article interesting.
There is definitely theory to how they are constructed, and you are right that the shifts and adjustments can be derived if you think about it and practice it. But that's just a longer way to the five patterns.
zozbot234|11 months ago
(If anything, I would want a "guitar learning" app to automatically come up with its own exercises, similar to ear training apps for learning to recognize intervals - and using something like a spaced repetition approach to evaluate how the user is doing.)
fastasucan|11 months ago
> What do you need "scales" practice for on guitar?
> These patterns only have to be practiced a little bit
Davertron|11 months ago
I've since gone back and learned a bit of music theory as an adult and it's been super helpful understanding the underlying principles so I can work things out vs. having to just memorize things without understanding why they work.
I think then you can go practice the various scale patterns and get good at them with the knowledge that you can always work out the scale from first principles if you need to.
Different strokes for different folks though I guess, I'm sure there's an argument to be made for not overwhelming folks with too much theory out of the gate. Not sure if I had started with a bunch of theory if I would have stuck with it when I was younger.
compiler-guy|11 months ago
https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/43516/can-someone-...
There is definitely theory to how they are constructed, and you are right that the shifts and adjustments can be derived if you think about it and practice it. But that's just a longer way to the five patterns.