“It seems I am choosing words that will stand,
and you are in them,
but if I blunder, it doesn’t matter —
I must persist in my errors.
(Boris Pasternak, “For Anna Akmatova,” translated by Robert Lowell in “Imitations”)
The bond between finger and fret is of a piece with that between rubber and road; each is the juncture of a dawning — whether of music or locomotion.
A flaw in the premise that fretboard insight underpins superior guitarmanship raises its head: It’s the inconvenient comparison of guitar playing with race car driving. I invent this implausible analogy, before you do, in order to prick it.
Must I handle my guitar like Sharon Isbin for my rendition of “Bird on the Wire”? Or my car like Danica Patrick for my commute to Flatonia? The obvious answer is, No; mine is, It would be nice. Never let the obvious be enemy of the egregious.
So let’s proceed.
The flaw with Octave-of-Preceding (OOP) treated in previous chapters is that the adjacencies engender unisons, not octaves, as follows:
6-5A == 5-0A (6-0E —> 5-0A is a Perfect Fifth, or 7 semis)
5-5D == 4-0D (5-0A —> 4-0D ditto)
4-5G == 3-0G (4-0D —> 3-0G ditto)
3-4B == 2-0B (3-0G —> 2-0B is a Major Third, or 4 semis)
2-5E == 1-0E (2-0B —> 1-0E is a Perfect Fifth, or 7 semis — again)
That an earlier issue of the Guide misspoke itself vis-à-vis OOP is of little consequence. Renaming it to “Unison-of-Preceding” would make for not only a blurtive acronym but also unmusicological consistency. Try to find in the literature, for example, a retainable explication of the Major Third anomaly in guitar tuning.
There you have it. Time to take a modal dive — coming next.
(c) 2019 JMN
EthicalDative 
Poet Brand
A label for Poet Brand applesauce featuring Whitman’s image. It was sold in New Jersey starting in the 1930s. Credit via The Grolier Club. (From Jennifer Schuessler, “On Walt Whitman’s Big Birthday, 10 Glorious Relics,” NYTimes, 5-30-19).
JMN
(c) 2019 JMN