[maxwells-daemon]

As someone who also used to overthink memorizing the fretboard: this is a bad idea. You should strive to just plainly memorize the names of all of the notes, the relevant scale and arpeggio patterns, etc, without any kind of tricks or "system" (no, not CAGED either). This is the only path to real fluency; imagine having a neat system of remembering what each English word means and having to go through it every time you wanted to speak!

[runarberg]

I started learning the guitar exactly 22 days ago and I came to the same conclusion. I know enough about music theory, notation, sound modulation and even the cognitive science of hearing* that I knew such a system existed and that I could have some fun times exploring one (no doubt the author had a fun time with this; I know I would). However, after thinking about it for a few minutes I decided against it.

And good thing I did, I went to my local thriftshop and bought Hal Leonard’s Method for a couple of bucks, and have been going through it on a daily basis (now on song 67 of 100) and I am already starting to get an intuitive feel for where to move my fingers and which string to pluck within a beat or two, or rather, my muscles simply know where to move after reading the note (albeit quite often a beat or two late; though I suppose this will improve with practice).

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* This comes from a) having played the trumpet when I was a child (including reading standard notation), b) tried to learn the guitar for a few months 20 years ago and then give up, c) BSc in psychology, and d) done some hobby projects which involved modular analogue synthesizers and the low level Web Audio API

[maroonblazer]

> the relevant scale and arpeggio patterns, etc,

That phrase is smuggling in a LOT of work that systems like CAGED help to simplify. I say this as someone who has played guitar for decades and slept on CAGED for too long.

[udit99]

100% agree. CAGED is extremely underrated. The starting premise is so simple, that most intermediate players go "yeah, yeah, sure...that's cool but it's not very insightful". It's when you start hanging all the basic (and probably more) scale/arpeggio patterns off it that it starts to become more and more valuable.

[pohl]

Agreed. OTOH, if the question is should I also learn some different way of thinking about music/fretboard, the answer is always yes. If it makes neurons fire, add it to the mix.