STILL Can't Memorize the Notes on the Fretboard? Try the Never-Ending Scale...

This is what the fretboard might look like to a lot of players. (Image by ChatGPT)

I remember jamming with a friend of mine one day when I was at Berklee, and he showed me something he learned in class called the "Never Ending Scale." I was immediately intrigued.
He explained how it was a way of playing one-note-per-string scales, an unorthodox way of laying scales out on the neck. The reason for doing this is to have yourself jumping all over the neck trying to find these notes, thus increasing your fretboard fluency.
The "never-ending" element comes from the way that the notes seem to wrap around the neck in a seemingly infinite loop, as you'll see in the example laid out below.
This can be quite difficult to pull off, especially when played in time. At this point, I would consider this primarily a note location/fretboard knowledge exercise, as it doesn't really provide much melodic content. That being said, if you can do this successfully, there's a good chance you're pretty adept at finding the notes on the fretboard.

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Objective
To improve your proficiency in identifying the notes on the guitar.

Directions

1. Choose a scale you want to practice.
   1. For beginners looking to learn the natural notes on the fretboard, use the C Major Scale: C D E F G A B
2. Using only notes within frets 1-12 (no open strings!), Play the first note of the scale on the 6th string.
3. Progress to the next note of the scale, this time on the 5th string.
4. Continue this pattern until you reach the 1st string. Upon playing a note on the 1st string, keep advancing through the scale, but revert to strings 2 through 6.
5. Do this until you arrive at the first note you played on the 6th string. For a 7 note scale, this will take 7 cycles around all 6 strings.

Example

This is something you should be able to do without looking at the tablature, but it can help you get started.
If you're somewhat new to finding notes on the guitar, I would encourage you to try this with a C major scale as it has no sharps or flats. For more advanced players, you can try this with any scale in any key. Sometimes, I use this to gain familiarity with a new scale that I want to have access to all over the fretboard for writing music.
Another thing I like about this is that it can be a good ear training exercise. Since you’re not relying on your typical interval shapes and the notes are often quickly jumping octaves, you have to rely on your ear to tell you if you’ve got the notes right. Trust me, it will start to become painfully obvious when you hit a wrong note!

Files

• Guitar Pro - the_never-ending_scale.gp
• PDF - the_never-ending_scale.pdf
• Audio - the_never-ending_scale.mp3

​Have fun with this. Until next time!
-Andrew