I agree with Hunter... I went through the whole thing, and played through your diagrams on my guitar... so I didn't just flip through it.. I spent over an hour on it. It does seem like its about basing the "pattern" on which fingers you are using. I can sort of see what you're going for, but found it a little hard to know where I was in the pattern.. since I already know the 5 basic seven note patterns, I don't know how easily I would have been able to learn the major scale in all positions on the fretboard if this was my first introduction to it.

But that being said, you could be on to something... I mean, you are looking at it in very different way. I'm just not sure if it would be any easier than memorizing the more traditional 5 patterns that are based on the 5 repeating octaves that span the fretboard. What I do like about the 5 pattern approach, is that I found after a while I started to visualize all the patterns across the entire fretboard. Being able to see a scale on a single string up and down the neck, essentially a "one-fingered scale" where you could just slide up or down to the correct notes on the same string across the fretboard, I think, is a really valuable skill. I met a guitar teacher who told me "we ALWAYS want to be as efficient as possible with our soloing, so for notes that are far apart, we move up or down on the strings to keep our hand in the same position..." Really? Because the solo by The Edge on "New Years Day" is one of my favorite solos of all time, and could you imagine how different it would sound if he played it without all that sliding on the same string? My point is that playing guitar should be about creativity and expression, not necessarily efficiency.

I'm not sure how your "Golden Pattern" would help people visualize across the fretboard, and not just up and down strings. Maybe that's something you could work on? Also, initially the diagrams really confused me, but then I realized you were showing an extended (width wise) fretboard. Maybe make the "virtual strings" grayed out or something, to show that they're not real, I don't know. I also noticed that a couple of your diagrams showed EADGBE at the 13th fret which I'm assuming was a typo.

I'd like to hear what other people have to say.. I'm not sure if you're on to something or if you're kind of re-inventing the wheel. I liked the idea of basically saying "look, here's this hypothetical extended pattern... believe it or not, every time you play a scale your playing some portion of this pattern". It just seems like the method needs a little more refinement. If your brave, you could ask Christopher Schegel to take a look.. he really knows his stuff, and I'm sure could give you a realistic appraisal of this approaches merits.

Also, I'd strongly recommend that you take a look at the MIT text "The Guitar Fretboard Workbook" by Barrett Tagliango (not sure about spelling). Thats an excellent text that gets right into the nuts and bolts of exactly what you are trying to take on here. Sorry for the long post, but I am interested to see where this goes!