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No Shapes: The Interval Method
A scale, an arpeggio and a chord are the same information at different densities.Scale boxes exist because we treat them as three separate libraries of shapes to be learned one at a time. Organise everything by intervals from a root instead and they collapse into one thing.
That's what this book does. There are no fretboard diagrams in it, and nothing to learn by rote except a single move.
The whole systemOne move — two strings up and two frets up finds any root note anywhere on the neck, with one correction crossing the B string. It's the only thing in the book you have to know coldRead the map — three rows covering every interval relative to that rootApply a formula — major is 1-3-5, dominant seventh is 1-3-5-b7, and so onPlay a formula simultaneously and it's a chord. Sequentially and it's an arpeggio. Fill the gaps and it's a scale. Any key, from any note, and not a shape in sight.
What's insideWhy scale shapes fail, and what a box actually isFinding any root note — the single move everything else is built onThe interval map, read upwards and downwards, with drills that make it automaticChord and scale formulas as numbers — enough to build a 13#11 without ever having seen oneBuilding chords, arpeggios and scales from the same formulaThe two-note third and seventh define almost any chordGuitar improvisation by targeting — roots, fifths, thirds, sevenths, then filling the gapsA thirty-day practice planTroubleshooting for when it goes wrongBefore you buyThere are no fretboard diagrams in this book. Not one. That isn't an oversight — a diagram of an interval map defeats the purpose of an interval map. If you want pictures of where to put your fingers, this is the wrong book, and there are plenty of good ones that do that.
It's short. A pocket manual for the music stand, not a course to work through. If the fretboard really does reduce to one move, one map and a list of formulas, a two-hundred-page book would contradict the claim.
You'll play worse for about a month. Computing an interval live is nothing like recalling a picture. That's in the book too, because it's where most people quit.
Who it's forIntermediate and advanced guitarists who can already get around the instrument and suspect their improvising is more retrieval than invention.
If you bought Wayne Krantz's An Improviser's OS or Mick Goodrick's The Advancing Guitarist and never finished either, this is the book that gives you a way in.
It's stand-alone — you don't need anything else I've written, though it does assume you know what an interval is.
One test, if you want to know whether you need play a phrase you like, then play it somewhere else on the neck. If it survives the move, you know a phrase. If it doesn't, you knew a fingering.
That's what this book does. There are no fretboard diagrams in it, and nothing to learn by rote except a single move.
The whole systemOne move — two strings up and two frets up finds any root note anywhere on the neck, with one correction crossing the B string. It's the only thing in the book you have to know coldRead the map — three rows covering every interval relative to that rootApply a formula — major is 1-3-5, dominant seventh is 1-3-5-b7, and so onPlay a formula simultaneously and it's a chord. Sequentially and it's an arpeggio. Fill the gaps and it's a scale. Any key, from any note, and not a shape in sight.
What's insideWhy scale shapes fail, and what a box actually isFinding any root note — the single move everything else is built onThe interval map, read upwards and downwards, with drills that make it automaticChord and scale formulas as numbers — enough to build a 13#11 without ever having seen oneBuilding chords, arpeggios and scales from the same formulaThe two-note third and seventh define almost any chordGuitar improvisation by targeting — roots, fifths, thirds, sevenths, then filling the gapsA thirty-day practice planTroubleshooting for when it goes wrongBefore you buyThere are no fretboard diagrams in this book. Not one. That isn't an oversight — a diagram of an interval map defeats the purpose of an interval map. If you want pictures of where to put your fingers, this is the wrong book, and there are plenty of good ones that do that.
It's short. A pocket manual for the music stand, not a course to work through. If the fretboard really does reduce to one move, one map and a list of formulas, a two-hundred-page book would contradict the claim.
You'll play worse for about a month. Computing an interval live is nothing like recalling a picture. That's in the book too, because it's where most people quit.
Who it's forIntermediate and advanced guitarists who can already get around the instrument and suspect their improvising is more retrieval than invention.
If you bought Wayne Krantz's An Improviser's OS or Mick Goodrick's The Advancing Guitarist and never finished either, this is the book that gives you a way in.
It's stand-alone — you don't need anything else I've written, though it does assume you know what an interval is.
One test, if you want to know whether you need play a phrase you like, then play it somewhere else on the neck. If it survives the move, you know a phrase. If it doesn't, you knew a fingering.
73 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 25, 2026
About the author
Graham Tippett
74 books4 followersGraham Tippett (1977-) studied literature, music and languages in the UK before making a permanent move to Mexico in 2005. It was there he began to explore and research methods of improvisation on the guitar and published the '2 Position Scale System' series of instruction books in 2014, which are the fruit of that research. He is also well-known for his love of languages and music, drawing parallels between the two art forms as he continues to write and research on the subjects of language learning and improvisation.
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