Using Octaves To Find Notes

Intermediate Grade 4 Intermediate Foundation 1
1

View the full lesson at Using Octaves To Find Notes | JustinGuitar

2

I am really confused regarding playing octave shape 4,3,2,1 Confusion is regarding what to mute while playing octave shapes. Unable to see justin sir finger clearly in video. Do I need to mute or note .

4

Octave Shapes | JustinGuitar.com

Playing Octave Shapes | JustinGuitar.com

in both link justin sir talked about it. Do see first video in which he was talking about shape 4,3 etc
i want to know which string to mute. i am confused regarding mute .
do i have to strum all strings while playing octave shapes ?

5

Hi Saloni, beyond my play grade those octaves but from what I can see is on the learn more section of the webpage you have the chord diagrams for the octave shapes. The strings to be muted are those marked X. As for muting them for shapes 5 and 6 this is detailed in the learn more section on the second link you posted. Shapes 1 and 2 are omitted as they are not practical to be played because the fretted notes are to far apart. For shapes 3 and 4 Justin shows muting the strings not to be played using the 1st finger.

2 Likes
9

When using the octave shape, is there a recommendation for how to identify the notes that have two names? I tend to think in terms of going “up” to a higher fret and that makes me want to use the sharp note nomenclature. But playing blues in F has trained me to think B flat.

10

All depends on what key you play in and if it’s easier to reqd it in b or #, if just guessing notes then it doesn’t really matter. I reckon # keys might be more popular than b’s?

11

This lesson was awesome for learning more of the fretboard, I already knew 3 of the 4 octave shapes but for whatever reason hadn’t connected to using them to figure out notes, more than I was playing them at times.

Great lesson, I feel enlightened!

1 Like
12

Yeah, I was the same mate! :joy: Been playing Octaves for years and hadn’t made that connection in terms of learning the fret board :person_facepalming::sweat_smile: This lesson connected the dots and now so much of the fret board seems easy :sunglasses::+1:
Literally only looked at that lesson a day or two ago, so eyes are now wide open :smiley::wink:

1 Like
13

Note: I also had a post on this topic in the PMT 4.3 Octave Shapes lesson discussion.

I have just started learning the grade 4 lessons including the Intermediate Foundation lessons. When I got to this again (I had started this back in 2016), I had a major “Aha!”, moment.

I looked at the octave shapes and realized that I could easily remember the octave shapes using beginner chord shapes:

Octave 1 - Weak Finger G shape, fretted notes only - I.e. high and low fretted notes

image
image

Octave 2 - C chord shape ( “outer” fretted notes, i.e. minus 4 string E note).

image
image

Octave 3 - 5th string power chord (again, highest and lowest notes only)

image
image

Octave 4 - 6th string power chord (highest and lowest notes)

image
image

I find this mnemonic makes it easy to remember the shapes without counting over frets and strings a fixed number of steps. I can even find the octaves from a note without looking by forming the chord shapes.

Note: The G shape for Octave 1 makes sense, since the G chord notes are G on 6th string and G on the 1st string. The C chord shape for Octave 2 also makes sense, since the C chord notes have C on the 5th string and C on the 2nd string. if you moved the listed chord chart octave 2 shape down 1 fret towards the nut, then you have the C chord minus the E fretted note on the 4th string. I pasted in copies of the chord charts from the beginning lessons. This especially makes the power chord shape comparison readily visible.

14

Note that your diagram for the G shape spans 2 octaves, not 1.

One octave would be E string, 3rd fret; and open G string.

1 Like
15

@Tbushell Tom, thanks for the comment. I knew that this was two octaves, I was just using Justin’s nomenclature. I was using chord shapes as.mnemonics for remembering the closed form shapes that Justin was using to find notes all over the fretboard. Octave shape 1 is pretty trivial since you really don’t need a pattern to remember that the notes on the same fret of the highest and lowest string are the same note 2 octaves apart. I agree that Octave 1 would be more accurately referred to as double octave 1 :slight_smile: I think that is why in the newer Octave Shapes lesson in PMT 4.3, Justin uses the terms Shape 1, Shape2, Shape 3 and Shape 4 to avoid confusion.