A Rock 'n' Roll, Mandolin Side

Where A Rock 'n' Roll lies on this reader's fretboard, and what it is for.

6 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's GDAE fretboard, with every A called out. Those markers are the useful part mid-bar: a chart moves under you, and the thing you need is where the root went — not where the pattern started.

Major pentatonic with a b3 rubbed against the natural 3 — bright and bouncy with a bluesy smirk. Playful, swinging, and built for boogie riffs.

Heard in: Fifties rock, rockabilly, boogie-woogie, Chuck Berry-style riffs, and jump blues.

Between chopping one number and chopping the next there is a beat and a half of nothing written down, and what goes in it is a fill drawn from here rather than from the page.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a chart counted in A and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.