TOPIC: Where to Put Your Fingers ?

At the last Alan Munde Workshop Alan emphasized the value of practicing fingering the diatonic chords for various keys in the different chord shapes. His point was that by making this a part of ones practice routine in time one would instintively "know where to put the fingers" on the fret-board. I have heeded his advice and it's a powerful tool. Suggest all banjo players make it part of their practice exercise.

I have been messing with the scales. Hope it helps!
I need a lot of help.

Yeah, my brother tells me constantly that I need to have my scales tattooed on my brain. The only thing is that I have it in my brain, I just can't seem to play it (mainly when it goes really high up on the neck; and believe me, with fiddle it goes up really high).

@ martinezg: I'm pretty sure that I know what you mean. I've done mando chords with fiddle before, but haven't really gotten to that yet.

Would it be the same with geetar??

Godbless, absolutely the same with guitar. Fretmentor is hammering the scale stuff in my private lessons, and they are absolutely esential. It's where the chords are formed, and for good lead play it is essential to know them. What helps on fretted instruments is visual indicators, like fingerboard inlays, and the frets themselves. I'm learning that strumming the guitar, and playing along with a tune is actually relatively easy. If you have the chord frames to the tune in front of you, all you need to work out is the strum pattern for the dynamic of the tune. But lead play reqires scale knowledge, technique, and voicing, and that requires extensive scale knowledge in all the keys.