navigation and not knowing.

okay, moving on.

so, 5-string. there are those that are pro-5 and those that are retro-snobs. i fall in between. i play 4 strings more or less exclusively. i own a 5 string, mostly because i like to have my options covered. i'd like to incorporate it into my tool box but haven't really managed to. i think i know why.

it has been my experience that whenever i pick up a 5-string i'm completely disoriented. like most people my point of reference is the E string. all of my shapes and muscle memory exist with the E string as the north star guiding my way. then this B string shows up and all of a sudden i'm lost and stumbling over my own fingers. what once was a thoughtless reflex now requires some serious thought and navigation... and that's not going to happen at a moderate 100bpm without some serious consequences.

because of that i've really shied away from my 5-string. i wanted to play it, but it was a thing that seemed to exist behind a curtain of mystery that made it inaccessible to me. "that's cool" i'd say and i'd put it back in its case and then in the back of the closet. hmm... there's a sort of deja vu about this situation. oh that's right, i had the same exact experience with guitar years ago. i didn't understand how the instrument worked and so the fretboard was a mystery. if the fret wasn't part of a riff i had already learned it essentially existed in a no-man's land covered in thick fog. and here i am again. well, i did it once before i can certainly do it again.

and so that's what i did, except this time it was much easier. i sat down with my little notebook, scribbled out the diagrams, put on a cartoon, and then just started the whole visualization process over again. starting with the pentatonic shapes in the key of C, because well... that's where we all start, right? and no sooner had i learned the shapes i began shifting the key around to avoid fret association. that's right... i quickly remembered spending months on this years ago and had forgotten that it was ever a mystery to me. 

i've spent a long time really understanding the fretboard that truly remembering what it was like beforehand is becoming difficult. on one hand that's just neat and a testament to my own progress, but on the other i don't want to forget what it was like to not know. that is the thing that i think separates good teachers from bad teachers. when i look back at my own musical journey, i've had several, teachers, all excellent players. as a student i wanted to be taught how to be independent on the instrument. as a student i lacked the knowledge of what there was to know so i could not ask to be taught it. instead, as a student, i was left up to my teachers to know what it was that i needed to know to be a functioning musician. so i got Santana charts.

i mean, what? no seriously, Santana charts. that was what i was given to work on. now look, (now) i know that the kind of knowledge you can extract from a single chart can build a career, but you have to have the foundation to be able to do that. Santana isn't the way to do that. well, maybe he is... but not without some caveats. 

i distinctly remember talking to one teacher and in a very round about way saying "i do not understand the instrument. i know i don't and it's impeding my progress"... only at that time i didn't know i didn't understand it so i couldn't articulate it. ultimately i stopped working with this teacher because i felt i wasn't getting anywhere. and that's not for a lack of trying. i was certainly putting the time in and he was doing his best.

so what was it? in retrospect, i think he (and likely the others) had forgotten what it was like to not know. and because of that certain aspects are taken for granted. such things like understanding the fretboard, especially when it's used every day, can easily be taken for granted. when it becomes so internalized that it appears as obvious as the sky is blue, it can be very hard to understand that others don't see it at all. 

i don't want to forget that. i don't want to lose sight of where i've been and what i've achieved. if i can remember what it was like not to understand this instrument maybe i can help show someone that currently does not know the way forward... and if it includes Santana charts, i'll explain the whys and hows.