No Shapes
Everything on the guitar from one note. No boxes, no diagrams, nothing to memorise.
A scale, an arpeggio and a chord are the same information
Boxes exist because we treat them as three separate libraries of shapes to memorise. Organise everything by intervals from a root instead and they collapse into one thing.
A well-drilled pattern feels identical from the inside to a decision, because the whole point of drilling it was to stop it needing thought. That’s why it delivers the same run whether or not you had an idea — at the same speed, with the same fluency.
This book replaces the shapes with three things: one way to find any root anywhere on the neck, one map of where every interval sits relative to it, and a list of formulas. Play a formula simultaneously and it’s a chord. Sequentially and it’s an arpeggio. Fill the gaps and it’s a scale.
Here’s the whole system
Not a sample chapter — the actual map the book is built on. If this makes sense to you, the book is for you. If it doesn’t, it probably isn’t, and I’d rather you found that out now.
Same string
One string up
Two strings up
Crossing onto the B string, add one fret. That’s the only exception in the entire system.
Three rows and one correction. Every chord, arpeggio and scale on the instrument comes out of that, in any key, from any note, without a single memorised shape.
What’s in it
Why shapes fail
What a box actually is, why it runs whether or not you have an idea, and what replaces it. Five pages, then never mentioned again.
Finding any root
The octave shape and its one exception. The only thing in the book you memorise.
The map
The three rows above, read upwards and downwards, with the drills that make reading it automatic rather than calculated.
Formulas
Chords and scales as numbers. Enough to construct a 13#11 without ever having seen one.
Building things
One formula, three densities. Includes the two-note shortcut: third and seventh define almost any chord.
Improvising
Roots, then fifths, then thirds, then sevenths, then filling the gaps. Targeting rather than running scales.
Thirty days
What to do each week. Three pages, because a plan longer than that doesn’t get followed.
When it goes wrong
The common sticking points, what each one means, and an honest note on how long this takes.
Before you buy
There are no fretboard diagrams in this book. Not one. That isn’t an oversight or a cost-saving — a diagram of an interval map defeats the purpose of an interval map. If you want pictures of where to put your fingers, this is the wrong book and there are plenty of good ones that do that.
It’s short. A pocket manual you keep on the music stand, not a course you work through. If the whole fretboard really does reduce to one shape, one map and a list of formulas, a two-hundred-page book would contradict the claim.
You’ll play worse for about a month. Computing an interval live is nothing like recalling a picture. That’s stated plainly in the book too, because it’s the point where most people quit.
A few things worth knowing
Who is this for?
Players who can already get around the guitar and suspect their improvising is more retrieval than invention. If you’ve bought Wayne Krantz’s An Improviser’s OS or Mick Goodrick’s The Advancing Guitarist and never finished either, this is the book that gives you a way in.
Do I need to read your other books first?
No. It’s stand-alone and doesn’t assume any of them. It does assume you know what an interval is.
Does this replace the CAGED books?
It approaches the same fretboard from the opposite direction. The CAGED books organise by pattern; this one refuses to use patterns at all. Plenty of people will get on better with one than the other, and it’s worth knowing which you are.
Is there a way to practise this?
Yes, and it’s free. Riff Cells deals you five random notes over any root and chord type. Because they’re random, there’s no pattern to fall back into — which is exactly the condition this method needs.
Is it available in print?
Yes — as a pocket-sized paperback and on Kindle, or as a PDF if you’d rather have it on a phone or tablet at the music stand.
Play a phrase you like. Now play it somewhere else on the neck. If it survives the move, you know a phrase. If it doesn’t, you knew a fingering.