Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

I’m not a rocker or blues man on a Gibson. I can make a long-fingered foray into the twelfth-fret region, but it’s not fruitful. When I mention “buck-effing” around the fretboard, therefore, only one B-C and E-F pair obtains per string. That’s final.

The premise of buck-effing is if you can swoop to the B and E on each string, naturally occurring diatonic semitones (NODS) get you to the following note virtually in your sleep. It’s the very next buck-effing fret every time.

Here’s a string-by-string tick-off of the pairs:

(1-0E/1-1F) (1-7B/1-8C)
(2-0B/2-1F) (2-5E/2-6F)
(3-4B/3-5C) (3-9E/3-10F)
(4-2E/4-3F) (4-9B/4-10C)
(5-2B/5-3C) (5-7E/5-8F)
(6-0E/6-1F) (6-7B/6-8C)

You’re four-sevenths of the way to note nirvana after several months of intense work on this shortcut. That leaves just A-D-G, which I tag with ADAGE for easy recall.

There you have it. In the quest to subvert musicology we’ve added NODS to OOF and OOP. It’s time to fabricate a cockamamie expedient for ADAGE — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN