u/jurymen

I saw a clip of George Benson talking about how he can play things a lot faster/easier if he moves up the neck than if he plays vertically and I realised i'm still quite stuck in the berklee scale shapes.

I've done a fair bit of three note per string scales, one string scales and some four notes per string. Also a lot of practise of moving between each pattern and it's neighbour but this clip somehow made me realise it hasn't made much of an impact to how I actually play when it comes to improvising.

Just curious to know how other people approach this and if any of you were ever stuck in the more 'vertical' playing.

Finger rolls are obviously an important technique and you are going to have to use them a lot. No disputing that. But lately I've been thinking about them a lot and wondering if they are always the right answer.

Recently I stumbled across a Scofield clip where he doesn't use them for fourths and I just wondered how many people out there are always using them for fourths and especially for things where you need to roll across three strings.

It's often a source of mistakes for me, I've practised and used them a lot (almost 20 years at this point) and can get it perfect in isolation/practise but when it comes to improvising I find the subtle change in finger position quite difficult to get right on the fly and it often leads to a stumble or hitting a dead string.

I had a teacher that was doing fourths as a stretch on one string and it's certainly do able but has its own challenges. Same as the other option of fretting each adjacent string with different fingers.

Anyways i'm just curious to know how different people generally deal with these sorts of movements and especially keen to hear from people that have tried out non-finger roll techniques for things that would normally require it.

It apparently costs $32 to recycle broken tvs. I've accidentally acquired three of them and can't afford the almost $100 right now.I also might not be able to take them to my next house. Any ideas or is there something I've missed/not understood in my search?

Edit: Thanks all some good ideas!