Guitar as Life Philosophy
The foundation of western music is the major scale; this is easy to learn on piano because all the notes are arranged on a singular linear run—but guitar has "six pianos." You only have a single hand to hit notes simultaneously across strings, so it helps to memorize key-specific shapes in each regions of a guitar neck.
Where beginner guitarists (including myself) go wrong is they memorize shapes, both scales and chords, without knowing the specific notes they’re hitting (relative to the root). We lean on shortcuts and tricks. My whole frame for learning guitar was “shape recognition,” but what’s really worth knowing is the landscape of notes and intervals, beneath all shapes, relative to the root.
If we’re in the key of G, in the A-shape pentatonic position (10th fret), and it shifts to an Am chord, the goal is to not shift to your Am shortcuts, but to know that an Am is 2-4-6 in the key of G. Instead of defaulting to a stale Am shape, you want see the entire fretboard as chord tones (2-4-6), know how to spice it (3s/7s), and what to avoid (1s/5s).
I’m trying to get to the place where I’ve internalized all 7 chord/pentatonic combos in all 5 CAGED shapes (35 total). And once that locks I can start playing with modes (ie: Dorian is the Am pentatonic tones over the G chord.)
So guitar theory is something like the spatial memorization of numeric patterns. It’s tempting to learn piano because it’s more straightforward, but I wonder if guitar plays into my strengths.
More broadly, guitar can mirror a life philosophy: don't fixate on shapes, see the numbers behind all shapes as an integrated field; always start from an idea in your head, never do the same thing twice.