Hey Rob, (and anyone else) I drew one, on a sheet of paper, with scale relations also ('cause 5ths is different). Old school like my teachers made me do. (I didn't get a smartphone 'till last year) I still like it better it's the size and shape of sheet music, Real Book, etc.,

For me its really not a issue of finding all the notes on the board,its a issue of concentration bringing both sides of the board into a musical feast.The best example I've seen at this is from the incredible Hiromi Uehara.

Great post. I've taught hundreds of Stick players and would have to say the weakest element is usually note identification. A few observations can help.
Yes there are 288 possible finger spots. But you'll probably never (hardly) ever play a third of them.
The higher frets on the bass side are rarely played. Likewise the very low frets (1-5) of the melody. Hand placement leads the player to play the right hand frets 5-15 (approx) and left hand frets 1-12 (approx.) Lots of hand choreography.
Now know that every five frets (dot or line marker) the notes are repeated, one string removed.
Also the phrase "F"riggin BEADGooC is important
Left to right F#BEADGC will always appear on the fretboard. If you have a B note, the E will be next string over and A another string over. And that's on both sides.
Lots of logic to the 4ths/5ths tuning. Try to see the overall connections, not necessarily isolated notes. Use those revolutionary dot marker placements.
You're not alone. Enjoy the adventure

Steve Adelson

". But you'll probably never (hardly) ever play a third of them."

That seems like a problem to me.
It seems limiting.
I love you Steve, but I want to use the whole Stick, one way or the other.
Rudiments obviously help you to find what you want, but I need to find ways to get out of those boxes.

Obviously you need a foundation, once you have that, then expand, and think of alternate ways to address what you were trying to do. All things start small, like eggs, we must break out of the shell. Like a moth must break from the chrysalis

Just have fun with it. You never know what might come out.

Ooooh, Stick philosophy!

This sentiment brings up an interesting question: if finding a way to play that 20th fret on the thicker strings, or the X-fret on the highest melody strings, is something to strive for, is the instrument serving you, or are you serving the instrument?

Playing uncrossed certainly brings low melody regions into play that aren't easily tapped if playing crossed, and lying the instrument flat can open things up, so maybe Emmett intended for every region to be played. But to me, certain notes are only present because it's a manufacturing impracticality to have partial frets/rods/rails going across the neck. (Not to mention potential cosmetic implications.)

Just a point of fact that certain frets just don't get played as often. Not that you dismiss them, but like any other instrument, there are sweet spots physically and sonically. I would guesstimate that 90% of all.piano music is in the middle 2/3 of the keyboard. On guitar. Learning frets 1-12 is more practical to start than the last 3 frets. Just my experience playing and teaching. Likewise certain fingers get used more often. Certain chords are used more. Not discriminating just stating practical facts.
I doubt the 24th fret of the 12th string (B) is used as much as first string 10th fret (C) in standard tuning.
YMMV

Steve A

As Jayesskerr says (please forgive if i get this wrong) I paid for all the notes, I'm gonna play all the notes.
I think (again forgive) Emmett came up with an instrument that serves his purpose, he hoped others would embrace it (manufacturing) and take the concept further.
Certainley the inventor of the Stratocaster and Jazz Bass never conceived what Jimi and Jaco would do with them.
I play the Stick for the sounds in my head, the ones I know how to conjure and the ones that haven't found a way out of the crucible...yet. (please forgive the metaphysical paragobbledeegook, or isit FreakinBEADGooC)

Another opinion - One thing that really helped me out, in lessons with Steve actually was taking a VERY common chord progression like 1645 and learning as many tunes that utilize this as humanly possible; transpose as required.

If you think about it, it's a roundabout (yet clever) way of learning a scale, and the notes within as well as some critical intervalic skips CEG ACE FAC GBD = Holy shit it's a C Major scale...
Works with just 145, but I think you you get more interesting mileage from 1645. CEG FAC GBD = CDEFGAB. That was a really great takeaway I got, anyways...

There definitely are spots on the Stick that are more easily accessible than others depending on what you are trying to do... I suppose it depends on if you are in FingerSticking mode, Bass mode, Muzak chord Arpeggio Mode, IwannabeEVH Mode or looper mode it may have an impact on how you tackle whatever piece you are going to play.

Of course, mileage may vary...

My favorite way to do this is to concentrate on a specific area of the board and learn the "white keys" within that region

Even though there are only three notes per string in 4ths and 4 notes per string in 5ths for diatonic scales, I like to learn the notes over a 7 fret range across the instrument. I start with the most commonly occupied regions.

I play each note with the 1st finger and move up the string from low to high notes,
then jump down to the next lowest string, etc.

This is what I look for:

Classic and RMR Melody, beginning at fret 10 (MR at fret 12)
(6 strings are shown, play the top 5 of them if you have a 10-string)



You'll notice that the lowest note on each string is an octave below the highest note on the string above it, that makes it easy to remember what each string starts with.

Say the names of the notes, or better yet, sing them as you go. Reinforcement is always good.

As luck would have it, the bass string are the same pattern. Start on the lowest string (low C at the X fret), or move up to start at the D (fret 2)(which you will need to do for RMR bass at fret X)



You can't play the F string on RMR because you don't have a fret below the X fret.

Remember, this is not about fingerings. Though, if you want, try 1/2/1/2/3 to go up the string.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

Absolutely. I gravitate towards certain parts of the neck, depending on the Stick. I tend to play where the sweet spots lie, and on the lower strings as much as possible, until a certain point is reached where the next string up sounds better than going to the bottom of the lower strings.

On my HarpejjiK24, which is similarly divided into a bass and treble side, like Stick, it has a very narrow range where the notes sound the best, and then a whole lot of repeated notes that never get played at all, although you can do simultaneous notes on different strings to really speed up the tapping. I find Stick has a much better range of playable notes across the fretboard than Harpejji does, but that's Emmet's engineering skills and design making it uniform.

But there are definitely sweet (well, sweet-ER) spots on the Stick.

And to the topic of note names, that was one instant attraction to me about the Harpejji, in that it easily lends itself to marking the keys just like a piano, with white and black keys, that are instantly identifiable by a piano player such as myself. I've told people that it feels like "cheating" when I started Harpejji because it was so easy.

Stick was harder for me. I initially marked my Rosewood 10-string with black violin tape, that beginners use on it, to show me the notes. And you know what? They really didn't work at all, to my embarrassment. I mean, yeah, I knew where the Cs where, but the tape was ugly and not as helpful as I had hoped.

I took off the tape, and just learned the notes near the Emmett markers first, and then just worked out from there. Now, I can't even look at those "sweet" spots on my Sticks without "Seeing" the notes. But I notice, the not-as-sweet spots are also not as known to me for the notes.

Ah....So, kicking and screaming, I admit that just sitting down and learning the stupid notes was really, really, really helpful to me for Stick. If nothing else, I know how to harmonize with a G chord wherever that G is, and then I know the patterns for that, and then where the 4th is from there, and where the 2 is from there, and next thing I know, just knowing that root, I've got most of the notes figured out. I may not be thinking note names, maybe more positional things like "here's the 4th and 5th, " and not necessarily "that is C and D." But I can name them!

Learn the damn notes. There's only 12, and they repeat, and you paid for all of them (although some are sweeter than others.) This is a great thread!

Adds: I ended up repeating a lot of what Jayesskerr said, before I got to his part, because he is smarter than me but has similiar awesome opinions! (People who agree with me are like, really super smart people. HA!) We also talk about this stuff a lot.