Originally Posted by: CSchlegel ...in the Intervals tutorial, only concerns learning the idea that you can find the same note in more than one place on the guitar. And you must get used to this idea in order to learn to locate any given interval on the guitar.
Have fun! :)

Too true. I really like the convention used by MIT, and that is laid out in Barrett Tagliarino's "The Guitar Fretboard Workbook", which shows that there are 5 root shapes that repeat across the fretboard. For example, for the first pattern, pick any note on the 2nd string (the B string) and then count 2 frets up from that note and play the note on the 5th string. These two notes are the same. He simply writes "Pattern 1 has roots on the second and fifth strings, two frets apart". Its easy to learn the five repeating root shapes, and from there, the scale shapes that are based around them.

One thing that I found that really helps is actually working the shapes out as diagrams on paper before attempting to play them on the guitar. Having a clear mental picture of the root shapes or scale shapes before you start trying to apply them to the fretboard really clears things up and helps avoid confusion.