Guitar Octaves

Octaves are simply scale notes that are 8 tones apart. The word literally means ‘eight.’ In hertz (Hz), which measures a pitch’s frequency (the speed at which a waveform modulates), each octave doubles in number. So, if you take an A at 440Hz and play an octave up, it would sound at 880Hz. Similarly, if you played an octave down, it would be 220Hz.

System 1 octaves can be seen as the hook on which all other System 1 exercises hang. Many guitarists get confused when seeing the guitar neck. There are huge expanses of the neck they don’t understand interspersed with small pieces of knowledge they do have, such as a box form or chord shape. It often feels like the neck is a vast ocean of unknown, dotted by tiny islands of knowledge. So, when they try to improvise, guitarists often get stuck in one or two very small areas. And they have to jump from one of these known zones to another, unable to connect them in any sort of musical way. It is simply because they cannot see how the neck is connected.

Having a firm visualization of where octaves are on your guitar neck is perhaps the single most important understanding you can have about the geometry of the guitar. It is the concept that is the ‘hook’ on which all other scales and arpeggios ‘hang.’  By knowing where the octaves are on the neck, you will be able to see how everything connects on the neck. You will be able to know all of your notes more easily and visualize where your scales and arpeggios are. Without an understanding of octaves, the guitar neck can seem mysterious and opaque, but once you understand octaves, you will be able to clearly connect all notes on the neck.

These exercises are not intended to help you master octave playing made famous by Wes Montgomery. These are simply exercises that will allow you to see all of the connecting ‘islands’ on the neck. You will note that they will essentially outline the CAGED system on the guitar neck.  

As you master these exercises, you will see much more clearly the arrangement of the guitar neck. This is no small thing, because it is a very complicated grid. Though the piano is not any easier to master than guitar, it is much easier to visualize. On the piano, there are 12 keys that repeat in the exact same geometrical shapes. Every octave is identical. And further, chord shapes are much easier to see on the piano, which allows the improvisor to see scale shapes to ‘fill in the gaps’ of the chord tones. The guitar is a much more complicated grid to visualize. It is very complex geometrically. Knowing your octaves helps you define and simplify the geometry.  

All 8 systems in this course will use this concept of visualization for an understanding of where you are on the neck, so it is an essential skill to learn.