I took a master class with Billy Strings' teacher. Here's his killer scale exercise.

In August I attended a fretboard geometry master class with Robb Cappelletto. Robb teaches at York University and mentors players through the Sonora Guitar Intensive, and he's the current teacher of Billy Strings and Andy Wood. He gave us a practice routine for the major scale that I've been playing ever since, and I've written it up as a new lesson. The video is coming soon.

The exercise

Pick a key, and find its root on the low E string and on the A string. From each root, play three positions: one behind the root, one straddling it, and one in front of it. That's six positions, and together they cover the neck. In each position, play the major scale, then the major pentatonic, then the major triad, up and back down. Then move on to the next key around the cycle of fourths, so twelve days take you through all twelve keys.

What I like about it is that it quietly mixes two systems that are usually taught separately. The behind and straddling positions are CAGED shapes (G, E, C, and A). The ones in front of the root are three-notes-per-string patterns. I added one thing to Robb's version: in the two 3NPS positions, a diagonal pentatonic and its triad, so every position gets all three layers. That makes eighteen shapes per key.

Where it stops, and the way past it

Eighteen memorized shapes is a lot, and they have limits. Every root in the exercise sits on the low E or A string, while most soloing happens on the top four. The CAGED D shape never comes up at all. And the shapes only describe six strings in standard tuning.

So the second half of the lesson rebuilds every one of those shapes from three building blocks that work from any root you can find: the warp between the G and B strings, the rectangle and the stack, and three-note fragments. Once you can build the shapes, you can add a seventh position from a root on the B string, and the same method extends to the other major scale modes.

Practicing it

At the end of the lesson, the practice routine has a row you can add to the Practice Planner. Each session it gives you the next key around the cycle of fourths, and Show the fretboard steps through all eighteen shapes for that key, from the lowest position on the neck to the highest.

The video will be free to watch on the lesson page when it's out. The written lesson, with right- and left-handed PDFs, is included with Silver membership and up.