What is the method for determining the correct box that works every time?
So what you're saying is I need to know all this stuff to use it, but it doesn't say anything thing about how/where to learn it. There must be a process one applies, given that they do know the required material. And I do know most of it. I'm looking for that process.
This has been on my mind for several days now. I'm trying to come up with a "simple" answer. So one more final response.
It's the nature of flash cards in general.
You have some kind info on the front, usually a question, and the answer on the back.
You can use them to check/test or reinforce information you already know because you already went through some kind of process to learn it.
If you don't know any of the information beforehand you can use them to show the answer and start learning the answers purely by rote.
You might come up with your own system for remembering the answers.
You might even discover the "correct" process you would have gone through to learn the material beforehand.
With either approach, the flash cards themselves don't teach you a process. They just give you a question and the answer.
You either already know the process that lead to the answer or you come up with one.
Example: The trainer comes up with minor left from E on the 5th string.
If you don't already know that that's going to be Box 3, or aren't familiar with the Boxes in general, there's no way to figure it out now.
If you don't know that E is at the 7th fret you're already screwed.
So you can look at the hint and it will show you the "answer".
Then you can memorize it.
And hopefully realize that any time minor left from any 5th string root comes up, it'll be Box 3.
So now you know.
Either you already knew it or you just learned it.
So that's the only "process" I can come up with once the trainer has dealt you a hand.
You recall and apply what you already know or you look at the hint and memorize it now and recall it when it comes up again.
To acquire that knowledge beforehand you can learn string by string as Griff suggests above or Box by Box as he taught me in SBS.
But to do either of those
you gotta get the info first, either from the chart or the pdf on the trainer page or the appendix in BGU or the Scale Encyclopedia in the front of several courses or from having done SBS (like I did) or MMBS or any number of other sources.
You
don't start out by learning the entire chart by rote or all the boxes in the pdf at one time.
But you
eventually need to know, by whatever process,
all the info in the chart because that's the info that the trainer based on.
Flash cards don't teach you a
process to get to an answer.
You already went through some kind of process that will lead you to the answer.
Or you turn the card over and memorize the answer.
That's my final answer.