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I hope you find the resources on this page to be useful. If you like this page and want to be notified of the next freebie I post, be sure to register here. I don't use my friends' email addresses for any other purpose.

If you haven't checked out FretBoard ABCs, go to the home page to see if it might be useful.

And remember, if you have yet to write a review on Amazon, it's never too late!

This is one of the first exercises in my FretBoard ABCs book.

The idea behind this exercise is to spend no more than 5 minutes at the beginning of each practice session playing through Counting Sheep. And soon enough, you won't need to Count Sheep at all.

If you can, set the metronome to 60 bpm and play along. If that's too fast, play on every other beat. Don't worry about fingering. As you pick each note, say it aloud. Better yet, sing the names of the notes on pitch.

Once you have this pattern in your head, try mentally playing through the exercise as you fall asleep at night. You'll be amazed at how much more quickly you'll learn the notes, and it can also cure insomnia!

The exercise itself was an jazz guitar lesson assignment from Buzz Chewning. Turning it into a mental imaging exercise was my idea. If you like this, click the contact button to drop me a note.

Click here to download the file.

Gary Burton, in his Coursera/Berklee Improv course presents ten scales in decreasing order of "brightness." These ten scales provide a sufficient foundation for improvising over most of the chords in most of the tunes ever written. For my guitar playing friends, I've created tab to show how these scales can be played, with roots on strings 3, 4, 5, and 6.

In places where four notes are played on a single string, I recommend that you learn first by sliding between two adjacent notes. Experiment with different pairs of notes and choose the slide that feels most natural and efficient to you.

Bear in mind that the patterns I've tabbed out here present only one of many possible fingerings. Learn these and others along the way or in sequence. Learn them in different styles, different rhythms, and with different accents. The more ways you can play them, automatically and anyplace on the neck, the better able you'll be to improvise on demand and on time!

That said, don't focus on these to the exclusion of leaning and practicing tunes or the other ways of practicing that you've found to be effective.

Ten Scales, roots on strings 6 & 4

Ten Scales, roots on strings 5 & 3

Our friend BigDawgsByte from the Guitar Forums put together a really nice set of sheets that present the three-string triad forms for the harmonized major scale, in ascending and descending order, on all string sets. Thanks BD!

Here it is in guitar pro format, and here's the pdf. Enjoy!

Here are the MP3s for the 28 exercises in FretBoard ABCs. The MP3s are midi files, not recorded guitar, but they’ll give you the general idea!

Exercises 1 through 7
Exercises 8 through 14
Exercises 15 through 21
Exercises 22 through 28

Selected Cycles

Want to Contribute?!

If you have material you like to contribute to this set of resources, contact me and let me know what you have in mind! If its consistent with the intent of this page, passes musical muster, and you're willing to share it for free, I'll be happy to add it in!

And if you have any problems with this page, please let me know!