See the Pentatonic Subset Inside Every FFcP Zone

Day 29 | about 25 minutes

G: Zones I and II

Focus: dim two degrees inside a fingering you already own and play what is left.

• 3 min: Visualize FFcP I; mentally dim degrees 4 and 7. In G Position I the 4 is C at the tenth fret of the D course and the 7 is F sharp at the ninth fret of the A course, and on the board those are the two faint hollow dots. Everything still filled is the pentatonic subset: G at the fifth fret of the D course, A at the seventh, B at the ninth, D at the fifth fret of the A course, E at the seventh and G at the tenth. Dimming means leaving them alone rather than forgetting where they are, which is why the board still draws them.
• 8 min: Play only 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 inside I, then II; name degrees once. In Position I that is G, A, B, D, E and G again, six dots on two courses. In Position II the bottom half is identical, G, A and B on the D course, and the top half moves: D at the fifth fret of the A course, E at the seventh, G at the third fret of the E course. Play each one up and back saying one, two, three, five, six, eight once through, and notice that your hand has not gone anywhere it has not been.
• 6 min: Alternate one bar full major scale, one bar pentatonic subset. One bar of eight eighth notes up the full scale, C and F sharp included, then one bar of the same hand with those two left out. The subset bar has gaps in it where the two notes were, and that is the sound the whole week is after: rounder, and it does not lean anywhere. Eight bars of alternating is enough to hear it.
• 6 min: Four phrases that remain in a called zone. A called zone means a slip or your own voice says I or II and you stay there: no crossing, no octave above, six notes only. Four phrases of about eight notes each, all out of that one hand. If a phrase runs out of notes, that is the point rather than a failure: a five-note set inside one hand is a small vocabulary, and this week is about finding out what it can say.
• 2 min: Mark any note you included by habit. It will be the 4 or the 7, and it will have arrived on the way past rather than on purpose. Write which one and where: in G Position I that is the C at the tenth fret of the D course or the F sharp at the ninth of the A course. Those two notes are the whole test of the week.

What extract means: The pentatonic is the major scale with the 4th and the 7th left out. That is all it is. This week never asks you to move, shift or learn a new fingering: it asks you to stay in the hand you are already in and not play two of the notes in it. If you catch yourself relocating to one of Week 3 and Week 4's pentatonic windows, you have gone back to keeping two maps, which is the one thing this week is trying to stop.

• End-of-day check: The subset is clean in I and II.

Day 30 | about 25 minutes

G: Zones III and IV

Focus: the same extraction in the two zones the hand knows least.

• 3 min: Locate roots, 3rds, and 6ths in III and IV. In Position III the root G is at the fifth fret of the D course and again at the third of the E course, the 3rd is B at the second fret of the A course, and the 6th is E at the seventh. In Position IV the root is G at the twelfth fret of the G course and at the tenth of the A course, the 3rd is B at the ninth fret of the D course, and the 6th is E at the seventh of the A course. Point at all eight before you play anything.
• 8 min: Extract the pentatonic subset in each zone. Position III gives G at the fifth fret of the D course, A at the seventh, B at the second fret of the A course, D at the fifth, E at the seventh and G at the third fret of the E course. Position IV gives G at the twelfth fret of the G course, A at the seventh fret of the D course, B at the ninth, D at the twelfth, E at the seventh fret of the A course and G at the tenth. In both, the faint dots are the C and the F sharp, and they stay silent.
• 6 min: Connect III to IV using only pentatonic notes. These two zones share exactly two notes, and the third board draws them gray: the A at the seventh fret of the D course and the E at the seventh fret of the A course. Both are in the subset, which is worth noticing, because it means the crossing needs no 4 and no 7. Two doors and no third, so cross on the A going one way and the E coming back.
• 6 min: Question in III; answer in IV, both ending on chord tones. A chord tone here is a note of the G chord: G, B or D. Ask a phrase in Position III that stops on a B or a D, cross on the A or the E, and answer in Position IV with a phrase in the same rhythm that arrives on a G. Four or five pairs. Both halves ending on chord tones is what keeps the pair sounding like one sentence rather than two fragments.
• 2 min: Log the slower zone. It is almost always IV, because its root is up at the twelfth fret of the G course while everything else it uses sits down around the seventh. Write the zone and the note you had to hunt for.

• End-of-day check: The subset is clean in III and IV.

Day 31 | about 25 minutes

G: All four zones

Focus: run the subset through the whole FFcP map, and see where the two maps disagree.

• 3 min: Random zone calls; answer with 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. A call is a numeral, one to four, and the answer is five notes and nothing else: in G a G, an A, a B, a D and an E, all from inside that hand. Position II answers G at the fifth fret of the D course, A at the seventh, B at the ninth, D at the fifth fret of the A course, E at the seventh. Five notes, stop, next call.
• 8 min: Pentatonic-only route I to IV and back. One line through all four zones using nothing but the subset, which means every crossing has to happen on a note that is in it. Up through I, II, III and IV and back down, no 4 and no 7 anywhere in it. The joints are tighter than they were in Week 1, because leaving two notes out leaves fewer doors: III to IV in G has only two.
• 6 min: Compare that route with the five-shape path; notice where the boundaries disagree. The two boards are the two maps. The FFcP brackets say where four hands sit; the pentatonic brackets say where five windows sit, reading 3, 4, 5, 1 then 2 from the nut up. Set them against each other and you can see they do not line up: the four FFcP zones cover one octave from four places, while the five pentatonic windows climb the neck. Neither is wrong. They are two ways of cutting the same wood, and today is about stopping them arguing in your head.
• 6 min: One-minute solo using all four FFcP zones. A minute, all four hands, subset notes only, over a G drone or over nothing. Count the zones off as you use them if you have to. The thing to listen for is whether the zone changes sound like moves you made or like moves you had to make.
• 2 min: Write one useful crossover point. A crossover point is a note where the two maps agree: a note that is a good door between two FFcP zones and also a note two pentatonic windows share. In G the A at the seventh fret of the D course is one, because it is the crossing between FFcP III and IV and it is held by both Shape 4 and Shape 5. Write down one you found and what it joins.

• End-of-day check: FFcP and shape labels do not compete.

Day 32 | about 25 minutes

D: Extract, do not transpose mechanically

Focus: find the set inside each zone rather than sliding yesterday's picture two frets.

• 3 min: Name the D major pentatonic: D, E, F sharp, A, B. Say the five out loud before you look at anything. They are degrees 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 of D, and the two being left out are G, the 4, and C sharp, the 7. On both boards the G and the C sharp are the faint hollow dots.
• 8 min: Find that set inside each FFcP zone. Position I in D gives D at the seventh fret of the G course, E at the ninth, F sharp at the eleventh, A at the seventh fret of the D course, B at the ninth and D at the twelfth. Position III gives D at the seventh fret of the G course, E at the ninth, F sharp at the fourth fret of the D course, A at the seventh, B at the ninth and D at the fifth fret of the A course. Find, not transpose: work each zone out from its own dots rather than sliding yesterday's G picture down two frets.
• 6 min: Draw six position calls; answer with a three-note motif. A motif is a short idea you can repeat and recognize, and three notes is enough for one: 1, 2, 3 is a motif, so is 5, 6, 1, so is 3, 2, 1. Pick one and keep it for all six calls. In D Position III the 5, 6, 1 motif comes out as A at the seventh fret of the D course, B at the ninth, D at the fifth fret of the A course.
• 6 min: Develop one motif through three zones. Developing means changing it a little each time rather than repeating it: keep the rhythm and move the notes, or keep the notes and change the rhythm. Play it in Position I, then a version in Position II, then a version in Position III, so the idea travels and stays recognizable. That is the skill Friday tests.
• 2 min: Score immediate starts. Six calls, and an immediate start is the motif beginning inside five seconds out of the right zone. Five out of six is the proof line. Write the number and which zone was slow.

Extract, do not transpose: Transposing means taking a shape you know and moving it, which is arithmetic your hand can do without your ear being involved. Extracting means looking at the hand you are in, finding the 4 and the 7 inside it, and leaving them out. The first gets the right notes the wrong way. By Saturday, when a key and a zone are called cold, only the second is fast enough.

• End-of-day check: At least 5 of 6 clean calls.

Day 33 | about 25 minutes

A: Motif transfer

Focus: carry one five-note idea through four zones without changing what it is.

• 3 min: Choose a five-note motif by scale degree. By degree rather than by note, so it can move: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 going up is the plainest, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1 coming down is another, and 1, 3, 2, 5, 6 is more interesting than either. Write the five numbers down. In A Position I, 1, 3, 2, 5, 6 comes out as A at the second fret of the G course, C sharp at the sixth, B at the fourth, E at the second fret of the D course, F sharp at the fourth.
• 8 min: Play it in all four A zones without changing its degree pattern. The same five degrees out of four different hands. In Position IV that same motif is A at the seventh fret of the D course, C sharp at the fourth fret of the A course, B at the second, E at the seventh, F sharp at the second fret of the E course. The notes move and the idea does not, which is the whole of what a motif is.
• 6 min: Vary the ending to land on 1, 3, then 5. Take the motif and change only its last note, so it finishes on A, then on C sharp, then on E. The three sound like three different amounts of finished: the root closes it, the 3rd leaves it warm and open, the 5th leaves it hanging. Play them one after another and listen to the difference the one note makes.
• 6 min: Connect two zones while preserving the motif's rhythm. Start the motif in one zone and finish it in another, so the crossing happens in the middle of the idea, and keep the rhythm exactly as it was. Positions I and II in A touch on one note only, the A at the seventh fret of the D course, so that is the door if you use those two; III and IV share six and are easier. The rhythm is what tells a listener it is still the same idea.
• 2 min: Record the best variation. One take of the version you would play again, and keep the file. The point of a motif is that it survives, and a recording is how you find out next week whether yours did.

• End-of-day check: The motif survives all four zones.

Day 34 | about 25 minutes

Random key and zone

Focus: twelve cold calls out of seven keys, each one answered inside five seconds.

• 3 min: Prepare 12 calls from G, A, C, D, E, F and B flat by Positions I to IV. The same deck as Week 2: twelve slips, each one a key and a numeral. All twenty eight are on the call slips page below, or use the ones you wrote. Include at least one from every key. Weight the rest toward the keys this week has not used: C, F and B flat. The two boards draw two of the harder ones, Position III in F and Position II in E, so you can see what a right answer looks like before you are asked cold.
• 10 min: Draw all 12; start a pentatonic phrase within 5 seconds. Not a scale and not five notes in a row: a phrase, with a shape and an end to it, built from the five notes inside the called zone. In F Position III those are F at the tenth fret of the G course, G at the twelfth, A at the seventh fret of the D course, C at the tenth, D at the twelfth and F at the eighth fret of the A course. Five seconds, phrase, stop, next call.
• 5 min: Repeat misses immediately, then again after two other calls. A miss repeated straight away is easy, because the answer is still in your hand. Coming back to it after two other calls is the repair that survives to tomorrow. Do both, in that order, for every miss.
• 5 min: Finish with four successful calls in a row. Four in a row, and if the fourth one fails you start the four again. That is the whole exercise, and it is what makes the end of a session feel like something rather than trailing off.
• 2 min: Record the score out of 12. Ten out of twelve is the proof line. Write the number, and write which keys and zones the misses were in, because tomorrow's checkpoint draws its key from the ones that failed.

Call slips to printThe key and position set: all twenty eight calls. Pick your twelve from them.mandolintrainer.com/workbooks/fretboard/slips/#key-and-position

• End-of-day check: At least 10 of 12 first-attempt successes.

Day 35 | about 25 minutes

Fusion checkpoint

Focus: four zones, four phrases, one chorus, and no accidental 4 or 7 in any of it.

• 3 min: Draw one key and all four positions in random order. One key for the whole checkpoint, and the four zones in whatever order they come out of the cup: II, IV, I, III say. The boards draw two zones in C, a key this week has not used, so it is a fair one to draw. Write the order down before you start, because the point is to answer in the order you were given rather than the order you like.
• 10 min: Record a 2-bar phrase in each called zone using only 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. Four phrases, one per zone, each about eight notes and a breath, with the recorder running. In C Position II the five notes are C at the fifth fret of the G course, D at the seventh, E at the ninth, G at the fifth fret of the D course, A at the seventh and C at the third fret of the A course. In Position IV they are C at the tenth fret of the D course, D at the fifth fret of the A course, E at the seventh, G at the tenth, A at the fifth fret of the E course and C at the eighth.
• 5 min: Connect all four phrases into one chorus. One time through eight bars with the four phrases in the order you drew them and a crossing between each, so the whole thing is one line rather than four. That is three crossings, and each one has to happen on a note both zones hold and both zones keep in the subset.
• 5 min: Replay and identify any accidental 4 or 7. In C those are F and B, and on the boards they are the faint hollow dots. Listen to the recording with the boards in front of you and mark every one that got in. One or two is normal at this stage. A handful means the extraction is still happening by luck rather than on purpose.
• 2 min: Pass, or repeat Days 34 and 35. A pass is a phrase out of any called zone inside five seconds, in any key, with no accidental 4 or 7 on the recording, and it has to happen twice with at least ten minutes between the attempts. If it did not, repeat those two days and nothing else, because the rest of the week worked.

• End-of-day check: Immediate subset access in every zone.