I made a little video about Linnstrument scale ergonomics

[LarsDaniel]

It is pretty basic stuff, but I hope it will be helpful to somebody.

[Roger_Linn]

Thanks, Lars. Very helpful.

[monch1962]

Thanks Lars, this is really useful content for a beginner like me who's still trying to work through ergonomics. If you find time to make any more videos like this, please understand that at least 1 person (me!) will appreciate it.

One request - could you please set the "SAME" note highlighting so we can follow which finger is doing what in any future videos like this? It took me a couple of viewings and stop/starts to get what you were saying about your middle and ring fingers wanting to play adjacent notes, and how that translated to where your 3-4 playing pattern. It's only when I twigged that you were playing a relative minor scale (about 2 seconds before you mentioned it!), not a major scale, that I got my "aha!" moment and realised how your fingering would work

[LarsDaniel]

Thanks Lars, this is really useful content for a beginner like me who's still trying to work through ergonomics. If you find time to make any more videos like this, please understand that at least 1 person (me!) will appreciate it.

One request - could you please set the "SAME" note highlighting so we can follow which finger is doing what in any future videos like this? It took me a couple of viewings and stop/starts to get what you were saying about your middle and ring fingers wanting to play adjacent notes, and how that translated to where your 3-4 playing pattern. It's only when I twigged that you were playing a relative minor scale (about 2 seconds before you mentioned it!), not a major scale, that I got my "aha!" moment and realised how your fingering would work

Ah, yes I can see how that could be confusing. This way of fingering has a feeling of being “home” in natural minor, so it was easiest for me to explain starting there. But forgot to mention that.
But I doubt I will make more videos like it, since this is the same fingering in all the keys and all the modes.

Btw, for harmonic minor you just tweak your 5th finger a step to the right on the four note “cluster”, and for melodic minor both 4th and 5th goes a step to the right.
With those two tweaks I would say that all 7-note scales based on western music tradition are covered.

[richwombat19]

Very nice. I just got my Linnstrument yesterday, so this is very helpful!

As a guitar player, I immediately thought of the Three Notes Per String concept. 3NPS uses a repeating pattern. Starting with Aeolian, it's two strings of WH (whole step half step), then three strings WW, then two strings HW, and then the pattern is repeated. A WW is about the biggest stretch possible on guitar, so your method wouldn't be possible.

Your method looks like position 6, or the Aeolian mode. However, with 3NPS, we do change fingering a lot. I agree with you that not having to do that takes less "brain CPU". I don't think any of the other positions/modes can be played similarly.

Yours is a great way to play vertically. I am interested in extending it to playing horizontally, thus being able to use the entire board (useful particularly with slides). The cool thing about 3NPS is that the seven positions (which represent all seven church modes) connect the entire fretboard horizontally.

Since there was a comment about if/how this could be used with chords (and I am interested in it too), I might make a fingering chart about it.

[richwombat19]

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[TigerBalm]

Thanks for the video Lars! I think it's definitely an interesting idea. I mostly use a "one finger per column" technique which has the advantage of no left/right hand shifts as you travel up the scale. Your technique does involve hand shifts but I like how the pattern is the same for every octave. I'll try it out.

[LarsDaniel]

Perhaps if one is used to thinking in guitar fingering, then it seems logical to use a strictly vertical approach where the fingering keeps changinging through the octaves. (This would be normal on a guitar.)
For me as a pianist, my thinking is influenced by piano fingering, where fingering is always the same through the octaves. And (and perhaps for the same reason) I find no problem in the horizontal movement.

Btw
One thing takes a little more practice to get the muscle memory of:
On a descending scale, the step where the 5. finger moves down a row and to the left. The thing is, that the note that the 5. has to land on, is visually obscured by your palm, so there is no visual help. This is different from the ascending scale, where the step where the 2. finger moves up and to the right can be aided by sight.

[John the Savage]

For me as a pianist, my thinking is influenced by piano fingering, where fingering is always the same through the octaves. And (and perhaps for the same reason) I find no problem in the horizontal movement.

It’s a bit of a six-of-one/half-dozen-of-another scenario really: i.e. guitar fingerings change with each position, but look the same in every key; while piano fingerings remain the same in each octave, but look different in every key. As such, guitarists often dread certain positions, while pianists dread certain keys. The LinnStrument can bridge that gap a little, depending on what tuning scheme you choose.

Cheers!