The Rosetta Pattern: An Intuitive Guide To Scales And Modes

The section at the beginning on memorizing the natural notes of the fretboard I think is useful to anyone that needs to learn the notes. I haven't done that yet, so I'm looking forward to using those lessons.The CAGED section is useful to a point. When it comes to the major scale and the other 6 modes, which includes the minor scale, there are only 5 CAGED shapes. The root notes just move around. The legend the author gives of each finger being a different mode relative to the root of the major scale is useful, but they only apply it to one of the shapes. I'm going to adapt the idea and apply it to the other shapes, but I felt like the author emphasized the one shape too strongly, which limits players to a single box on the fretboard. I would have liked to see the idea on all 5 shapes. And in my experience, the modes beyond the major (Ionian) and minor (Aeolian) are more of an advanced concept. You can play a whole lot of modern music with just those 2 modes.And they completely lost me in the pentatonic section. I just memorized the pentatonic shapes the other day, after 22 years of super casual guitar playing, and relating them to the mixolydian mode just confused me. You drop 2 notes from the scale, and though they're in different positions for each mode, they're always the same notes for each relative mode. So the 5 pentatonic shapes are subsets of the diatonic shapes that follow the same moving root concept. The pentatonic shapes are super easy to memorize; there are only 2 notes per string in each shape. You're probably better off taking the 20 minutes to an hour you'll need to memorize them than trying to apply this method.All in all, you can learn from this book if you're a beginner and you'll glean a bit from it if you're more intermediate, but some of it might be confusing. I've only played casually for years, but I've taken in a lot of information on guitar theory (because I've spent too much time reading and not enough playing), and I could see what the author was doing in several instances, but if you don't know the why you might be a little lost. It's good that they introduce you to the concept of patterns on the fretboard because the primary scale shapes are just a set of repeating patterns. As are the notes, intervals, etc. It's all just a set of repeating patterns that you have to take the time to memorize. But you're going to need to get more into theory if you want to be able to expand on this. There are plenty of excellent books and websites on guitar theory out there. Guitar Fretboard Workbook by Barrett Tagliarino is a good one. The website Applied Guitar Theory is a great resource, as are the youtube channels Signals Music Studio and Steve Stine Guitar Lessons. Make sure you find resources on guitar theory though. General music theory won't introduce you to the patterns as they apply to the guitar.One thing that did bother me was the author talking about covering intervals in a future book. I hope they remove that if they release a second edition. It's frustrating when a author talks about a future book that doesn't and might never exist.

This book is a reimaging of the standard CAGED system for learning the guitar fretboard. Combine a little bit of theory, a little bit of pattern recognition, wrap it up in the KISS principle and you've got the Rosetta Pattern. If you stick with it, you'll soon be able to not just play a position, but know which note you're playing while you do it. Pretty soon, you might start thinking of yourself as a guitarist (I'm not there yet, but I can see it far off in the horizon).

we are looking for the shortcuts for learning guitar, easier faster ect,I am just starting on this book and am very impressed with the way the material is presented, using patterns and chunks of knowledge, i am starting to connect the fretboard to notes, and can see the light finally, without trying to memorize all 6 strings and 12+ frets.Thanks for putting the book out