Guitar Fretboard Mapping: The Five Sweet Boxes

July 19, 2023

Pro tip: please watch the short video version of this post that I link to here: www.guitarsuccess4u.com/5boxes.  It will give you a much clearer grasp of what I’m sharing here.

Today’s strategy will be super helpful in showing you key locations on the fretboard that you can use as marker points on your way to mentally owning your guitar.

Memorizing the fretboard can be a confusing, frustrating process. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can sometimes be sweet. 

Speaking of sweet, my wife really enjoys chocolate. Now, if I was a really generous and thoughtful husband and I wanted to dote on my wife extravagantly, I could – Buy Chocolates Each Friday.

Hold onto those four words for a moment. 

I have a tactic that could be really helpful to you as you endeavor to tackle certain specific locations on the fretboard.

If you’ve experienced previous sample lessons of mine, you know that I’ve highlighted natural notes on my fretboard maps, and today is no exception.

Have a look at the diagram I’m providing here.

Up and down the fretboard, we have a “boxed set” of four notes. These notes are B and C, and E and F.

I’ve made all the Bs pink, all the Cs orange, all the Es green, and all the Fs blue. On my diagram, you’ll see all 6 of the pink Bs, all 6 of the orange Cs, all 6 of the green Es, and all 6 of the blue Fs.

But there are only four situations inside our frontier here where the four notes are all grouped together on consecutive strings on the same two frets, so I’ve grouped them into four nice little boxes, which I’m calling “sweet boxes.”

Let’s use the mnemonic device from earlier –

Buy Chocolates Each Friday, to help us as we go from the lowest to the highest strings, playing the notes B & C, and E & F on juxtaposed strings at the same frets.

We can reference each red box that encapsulates these four notes.

We can first go from the lowest strings to the highest strings. We’ll start on strings 6 and 5 at frets 7 and 8 as we “Buy Chocolates Each Friday.”

Next, we can move to strings 5 and 4 at frets 2 and 3, as we “Buy Chocolates Each Friday.”

We can then move to strings 4 and 3 at frets 9 and 10 as we – you guessed it – “Buy Chocolates Each Friday.”

For now, I’m going to skip over to strings 2 and 1 at frets 0 and 1 with – once more with feeling – “Buy Chocolates Each Friday.”

We’ve played the notes in four intact boxes that span 2 strings. 

Let’s do a little sleuthing here. If I’m playing a set of two juxtaposed strings, and I have a 6-stringed instrument, how many sets of juxtaposed strings can I access? Well, I can play on strings 6 and 5, 5 and 4, 4 and 3, 3 and 2, and 2 and 1.

So, I can play five sets. But haven’t I only shown you four boxes?

That’s exactly what I’ve done. That’s because we have an anomaly, because of the tuning of our guitar.  Although most strings are separated by a perfect 4^th, one set of strings is separated by a Major 3^rd. And which set of strings shares that interval? Strings 3 and 2, the strings I skipped over a moment ago.

Now, what if I bought a box of chocolates for my wife, but I accidentally dropped the box as I was crossing the street, and it got ran over by a truck? Well, it wouldn’t look like a box anymore. Because of the tuning between strings 3 and 2, we have an anomaly. 

If we look closely at our piano fretboard from today, we see that we do have another “box” on strings 3 and 2, but it is disjointed because it got ran over, and that’s why I’m outlining it in blue. I’d feel blue if my chocolate box got ran over, wouldn’t you?

So, if I want to play this set of B & C and E & F here on strings 3 and 2, I’ll need to play notes on frets 4 & 5, and 5 & 6 respectively.

“Buy Chocolates...Each Friday?” Yeah, maybe next Friday, right?

So, now you can play all five sweet boxes from low strings to high strings – strings 6 through 1, including the box that got ran over. 

As you can probably tell, two of these boxes are lower in register – indicated by bold letters on our diagrams.

You can also move from the lowest frets to the highest frets for these five sweet boxes, as I demonstrate in the video that accompanies this article.

This discussion has been pretty technical, but you of course have the option of watching and re-watching the video if you want to establish these locations more securely.

The next level is to try to access these five “boxes” either by ascending or descending strings, or ascending or descending frets.

But get to know these patterns with the Five Sweet Boxes. They will serve as great anchor points for full and partial chords, the capo, and also scales, arpeggios, and any musical fragment that’s anchored on the fretboard in any key. 

Thanks for exploring this lesson. Keep showing up! And if you want a much more comprehensive, self-paced experience, treat yourself to www.GuitarSuccess4U.com.