May 2025 Challenge Response

[Laurel C]

Hi AM’ers,

This month’s challenge is a milestone for me…50 challenges. Never been in the fast lane. The first year joined as a free email member 2017, didn’t play anything. Took the plunge with premium in March 2018 and worked on just one full lesson. I needed the coordination to hit the right strings and then keep the momentum up for the whole duration which was a mountain to climb. I had never gone beyond the 3rd fret with first position chords. At the end of 2019 submitted my first challenge. The fretboard ‘real estate’ still continues to fascinate me … its like this engineering marvel within 6 strings-12 frets. This month’s submission is a reflection on that.

[KT]

Hi Laurel
Definitely I will set a time to review your presentation. Very interesting scientific approach to mastering the fretboard
KT

[Michael L]

Laurel, are you an engineer? Because your mind works a lot like mine does!
This is great information, and very worth a second or third run through. It seems like a lot more work putting this kind of video together than just grabbing a guitar, hitting record, and playing something, but I’m glad you did it.

[Laurel C]

LOL I knew you were an engineer Michael by the way your mind worked. Not a career as an engineer for myself but did work on a production assembly line for 10 years making cars so a mechanical and 3D assembly mind.

[AndréM]

Wow! Brian has some competition.
Awesome presentation Laurel, but my head is spinning.
Well done.

AndréM

AndréM

[sunjamr]

Nicely done, Laurel. That must have taken a lot of work. CAGED is useful knowledge, but don’t forget to try playing a solo on one string! That develops intuition and ability to improv.

Sunjamr Steve

[Alan L]

Wow, excellent presentation! My lightbulb was also related to caged and learning those root notes. Amazing how the patterns can be repurposed for new tonality.

[Wayne Nunez]

Congratulations and thanks for the info,very helpful

[Brendan G]

Thanks so much. What a great submission.

Brendan

[JoLa]

This is indeed a very well put together presentation, Laurel! You definitely do have an analytical mind and skills to organize and put together it so nicely together. I find it interesting because my mind doesn’t work like that at all and therefore I got lost very quickly and was not able to fully appreciate the analysis. And I was also hoping to see you play something for us! 🙂

Congratulations on 50 challenges! That’s quite a journey, you should be proud of your milestone!

🎸JoLa

[Gary W]

Wow! Brilliant – This is like an Open University masterclass. Thank you Laurel.

Gary

[Jennifer D]

Oh thanks Laurel you read my mind – I was just thinking we don’t get enough diagrams. I’m going to watch this again!

[John H]

Oh my goodness Laurel-this is going to be really helpful. Thank you so much. A lifetime of CAGED study in a nice video. Seriously, I am going to thankfully resort to this when I have time to grab much needed ideas. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. I will send link to Any’s lesson later today. Peace

John

[James B]

Very nice and thorough explanation, Laurel. Thanks for putting this together for us.

James

[JoeD1]

What a presentation Laurel! I’m going to be referring to this when I progress to the CAGED system. It will surely be very helpful to me.

Joe

The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge

[Martin W]

Laurel, that was a very well put together and concise presentation of CAGED / pentatonic shapes , I followed that intently, it’s a great reference , you must have put some time in creating that .
Thanks for sharing and congrats on your 50th milestone.

Martin

[Bill]

That’s a lot of information, and the narrator’s voice a calming presence (like Siri)…maybe I’ll play this as I’m going to sleep each evening and it will slowly absorb into my brain.
Cool presentation Laurel.

[Dieter]

Very interesting.

Dieter

[charjo]

Laurel,
I’m so happy to find someone who goes through the kind of mental gymanastics I do.
I find my approach more and more is going to the octave patterns.
For example I want to see the A minor pentatonic pattern and the A major pentatonic pattern around the A roots in one position. That way, if I can relate intervals around the roots, I can create the A minor pentatonic, A major pentatonic, full A major, full A minor and A mixolydian or A dorian all in the same place. I’m not there yet in all 5 positions but I may try to throw my modal approach at it to help get me there.
John

[Manfred M]

Wow, Laurel, that’s like a whole lecture in just over 4 minutes. Impressive how you put it together and very interesting stuff. But as I’m currently on vacation in Greece, I’ve marked it as a favorite and will look at it again when I get home.
And congrats on the 50 milestone. I might be there next month.

Take the chance to meet your AM friends on Zoom
The next Meetup will probably take place in July/August 2025

There will be a detailed announcement here in the forum in good time.

I look forward to meet you.
Manfred

[Denise]

Hi Laurel, that was a deep dive into the scales and patterns. I like how you visualized in a way that I can understand.
I think I will have to watch your video a few times.
Thanks for your work. It is really very helpful.
Denise

More Blues!

[Paul S.]

Fifty challenges! Holy cow.
This is the most orderly and intelligent explanation of the relationship of patterns, shapes and keys I’ve ever seen.
The whole presentation was worthy of a video textbook.

[Pap]

Nice Laurel! Congrats on completing 50 challenges. Pap

[Bob Utberg]

Congrats on NUMBER FIDDY!!! Superb explanation. And this is a popular choice this month – for a great reason!

Bob U. (aka Bobby Ut)

[Mark T]

What an excellently constructed video, Laurel – like others have commented, I too was also looking forward to hearing you play examples, but this is to take nothing away from your submission that I’m sure many of us will bookmark for future reference. – Mark 👍🎶😎

[Richard G]

Huge congratulations on your 50 challenges Laurel, that’s a great achievement. I’m also impressed with your detailed explanation of scales and patterns. It’s almost impossible to digest in one go but it’s definitely worthy of quite a few visits.

Richard

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