Learning the Notes on the Fretboard Introduction The impossible task of learning all the strings on the neck of the guitar is now upon us. It s not as hard as you might think, the biggest problem that people face when learning the neck, is that they try to learn it all at once, but find it is an almost pattern free matrix of frets and strings. It s really hard to learn them all at the same time. And there are some real challenges with the way some people tell you how to learn them. I won t spend much time explaining the other ways, but you ve heard people say use octaves to help you. This is ok, but not great, the thing is, you want to know this is the note because it is the note not because it s the octave of another note, or one fret up from another one. And you ve heard people say, just learn them for your next lesson. But it is tricky, and some people only learn them kind of sloppily and are really unsure, and have vises that keep them from feeling totally comfortable with where everything is. This is method is not a short cut, it s not an easy way out, but it is a thorough way to learn the fretboard. In fact some people can learn the fretboard much faster than the way presented here; I didn t learn it this way, but the way I did learn it has evolved into what I m presenting below. The way this program works is by isolating one string at a time, in order to take away the frustration of learning the whole neck. Think about it, it s not quite as daunting as learning the whole thing. In fact playing just one string at a time seems pretty easy, right? There are many reasons why this system works, but maybe the most important is the fact that it will seem easy to you, and not scare you away. It takes away all the crazy combinations and frees you from getting confused by the other strings. It also takes the pressure off learning all the notes on all the strings at the same time. The absolute quickest you should go through this method is one string per week. Don t sell yourself short by skipping ahead. In fact I will make it impossible for you to this first time around, by only posting the next lesson a week later. You may think this is only holding you back, but don t give up working on it. It will only take about 20 minutes a day, and it will be very easy once you get the hang of it. I would encourage you if you don t feel
comfortable moving forward to the next lesson then don t. You want to know the string without fail. The thing is many of you have been playing guitar for 10 years, maybe 20, or 30 and you never took the time, or were scared away from learning all the notes, ask yourself, what really is 5 to 10 weeks of 10 years? Or even 1 year? Not a lot, and maybe some of you sort of know the fretboard, but don t feel that comfortable, this method will make you comfortable, you will feel free at last. Beginning students of mine start these in lesson one, with the same success. Why not you? To begin this method there are a few things you must know first. 1. is a little bit of theory, and 2. the very basics of reading music. Below is a short theory review to get you started if you don t know the above requirements, and it is certainly beneficial to go through, if you feel a little sketchy about it. I would recommend everyone to read it; it will get you in the swing of things to how this works. And what is 5 minutes of your time? I would only skip this section if: You understand the piano, the construction of the major scale, how to read music and rhythmic notation. There will be very little tab used in this lesson, but believe me you will not need it. This is not to say tab is a bad thing, but it is impossible to decipher useful patterns pertaining to learning your guitar neck. So if you are ready to start learning all those notes, and be able to read music, and get a little theory in the mean time; let s get started! Theory Review
If you learn the piano you can learn any instrument. How many times have you heard this phrase before? Probably a hundred times, what exactly do they mean by it? Why did Dizzy Gillespie say jazz musicians were better in the bop era because they played the piano? This is because the piano is so easy to visualize, much easier than the trumpet or guitar, for sure. The thing is the piano is linear and music is linear. Here s what I mean by that. On the piano if you hit a note on the left then one to the right, you will ascend in pitch, and the other direction descends in pitch. Guitar works in a similar way on a single string. So before we get to the guitar let s take a look at a piano, so you can begin to visualize the note sequence better, and have a established pattern in your head. #-Sharp b-flat This is what a piano looks like, I swear (check me if you like). On the piano there are black keys and white keys. The white keys are the natural pitches and black keys are what we call accidentals. Natural means: there is no alteration to the pitch, up or down. Accidentals are the natural notes altered in pitch either up or down.
Notice the musical alphabet only goes from A to G. The natural notes are: A, B, C, D, E, F, G And the accidental notes (at least in reference to the black keys are): C#/Db, D#/Eb, F#/Gb, G#/Ab, A#/Bb. Here is something I d like to explain before we go any further, realize this, it is very important. These are just names, or Labels. That s all they are, you could literally call C ; yellow and who s to say you are wrong? God didn t write that the frequency 440 hertz will be called A no matter what, it will always be A. This didn t happen in fact most Spanish countries call there notes using Solfege (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, ect.) where Do is C. So realize these are just names, and they aren t really that important, they are just a label. So onward we go. If you re good at math, you be good at music. That s because music is all patterns, notes are what they are because of a pattern, and this is why the piano is great it exploits the pattern. Remember I said, the black keys alternate on the piano 2, 3, 2, 3...ect indefinitely, and guess what, the middle black key of the group of 3 is always G# or Ab. So on the piano you can see all the notes laid out before you, and there is no guessing what is where. Imagine being able to do that on guitar? It s the first thing you learn on piano!!!!! We can decipher a lot just from just knowing where one note is alone. Notice above I posted a picture of a piano, so let s take a closer look and see what we find out.
What patterns do you see? What if we just play the white keys starting on C and ending on C? If you had a piano by you would be able to notice something, and if you do I encourage you to try, but if not you will have to take my word. What do you hear? Sounds pretty familiar, right? What you just played was the major scale. All of you know it, maybe you re not sure yet, but let me give you a clue. Have you ever heard that song, or sound when someone sings, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. or Do a dear, a female dear, Re a drop of golden sun.ect. This is the major scale. I know you are all familiar with this, and some of you are saying, no more sound of music. But realize this is the scale that our western system of music is based on. Everything we come up with from here on out is from this. Even minor scales, and all the modes, are all learned in reference to this. Needless to say, it is important that you understand how it works. So realize again that these names mean nothing, really, they are just a means of identification, but they are made in a way to make your and my life easier.
Notice that the note just right of G is G# and guess what, the note to the left is Gb ; this is true for every note. If you move to the right one space it is always sharp, if you move left it is always flat. Again remember these are just labels, Gb and F# are the same. Just like E# and F are the same. Don t worry about it too much, just realize it is just a label and the rules never change. This is the same on the guitar, if you move up the neck (towards the body) you are sharpening the pitch, if you move towards the headstock, you are flattening the note. So now that we know that playing all the white keys starting on C and ending on C is the major scale, let s dig a little deeper and see what kind of pattern we come up with. Notice that if we look for a pattern, we see that there is a space between C and D, where there is a black key. And there is a space between D and E where this a black key, but when we get to E and F there is no black key separating them.
And there shouldn t be, remember this is just the way it is, this is the way sound works, and it just so happens that when playing a major scale starting on C (Aka C major scale) there is no space between the 3 rd and 4 th note. If we go from C to C we find there are spaces between all the notes except, E and F and B and C. So we could call these 2 types of spaces, 2 different names. How about we call them, what everyone else calls them; Whole Step: This is when there is a space between the notes. (For example: the space between D and E.) Half Step: When there is no space in between (ex. E and F) As you can see above I already labeled the different spaces with the first initial of each type of space. W-Whole, h-half. So if we put the whole pattern together from C to C we get: W W h W W W h Now you re probably saying, Okay, what good is that? I ll tell you, this is the pattern for the Major Scale. Meaning, no matter what note you start on you will be able to come up with a major scale, using this pattern. Let s try it out. How about we start on the note E If we go up a Whole step from E we get F# Another Whole step is G# Then a Half step, A
Whole step, B Whole step, C# (are you still following on the piano?) Wholes step, D# Half step, back to E If you have a piano try it out, you ll see that I m right. Now don t think I forgot about you piano less people, it is now time to pick up your guitar and try this out. Guitar works the same way as piano, except you can t see the black keys, but they are there. So if you take the logic from above you will see that a: Half Step: moving just one fret either way Whole Step: Skipping one fret either way. So just start anywhere on your guitar, playing on just 1 string for now, from the starting note move towards the body of the guitar a Whole step, then another Whole step, ect, ect And fill the pattern;
WWhWWWh You will see that it works flawlessly, if you mess up you will be able to hear it. And if you start with an open string, you should end on the 12 th fret, (the one with 2 dots) So anyway, let s get back to the piano, and after that I will show you why this will help you learn the fretboard, with the first guitar lesson. Let s say you are playing the C major scale, but you want to start on E, (yes you are aloud to do this) could you figure out where the rest of the notes are? Well let s look at the piano first. Notice to get to F we need to move a half step, to get to D we need to move to the left a whole step. This seems pretty easy, right? On the piano that is. Basically, like stated before, every note has a whole step between except E and F, and B and C. Do you think you could remember that?
EF and BC EF and BC One more time for posterity EF and BC So let s go to the guitar!!!! In case you didn t know these are the notes of the strings: Thicker lines indicate thicker strings It is important that you remember these notes, it s not so hard if you try, you could come up with some simple phrase like, Every Alien Digs Great Big Elephants Or something, and to not get confused with which E is on what side. Just think about the word heavy Indicating that the thicker, heavier side of the strings are EAD not EBG. So now that we ve got that cleared up, let s start figuring out the notes! Lesson 1 (The D string)
As I was pointing out in the theory lesson above, we can figure out the C major scale, meaning all the natural notes, from anywhere in the scale. For example: If we start on B to go to C we would move up a half step, which is 1 fret on the guitar. If we want to go to A we are going to move a whole step down, which is 2frets away (or putting a space between). So knowing this we are going to figure out our first string. Which is the D string (look above if you are uncertain of which one it is). Wait!!! Why the D string? And not the E string? I thought you d never ask, normally with a beginner student I would start with the E string because in some ways it s the most logical, but because I m writing this initially to help out people who have been playing awhile and already sort of know the guitar, I had to go for one of the lesser known strings. Why? Well because I know a lot of you already know the E string pretty well, and for a lot of people it s the only string you really ever learned, and you ve always been stuck on it, and I would be afraid that some of you will not finish all of the lessons, and for you just to get the E string out of this whole thing, will really do no good for you. I d hate to see that happen. So if you just decide to quit after one lesson, at least maybe you will learn the D string and maybe now you will no both the D and the E and that s better than just learning more about the E string. (Also classical guitarist tend to work up the E string first, so they have a hard time learning the rest of the strings) And not to mention, people play too much on those strings as it is. You will probably become, in some ways, most comfortable with the first string we start on, and maybe you will play some amazing things that no one s really played with there. Now I haven t decided totally what order I m going to move through the strings, but I probably won t save the E for last, but then again maybe, but
let s not worry about that, your assignment this week is to only pay attention to the D String. From this point on, until the next lesson appears, you can only focus on note playing, on the D string. Make this promise to yourself, it is important. Think about how easy this is, all you have to play is one string, now I m not saying don t play your other strings at all. Please go ahead and work on technique and chords, and learn songs, but don t work on learning your notes anywhere else on the guitar. This will only make things harder. And just think you have a whole week, or more, to learn all the notes on the D string. You can certainly do it. There are only 12 different notes. If I asked you to remember a number 12 digits long and you had all week to learn, you could easily do it. So don t make this any harder by working on anything else. Now saying that, if you have first position down or something and you want to play out of your classical book, go ahead, but don t play any songs that you would need to learn new notes. Don t stress yourself out. Relax and make it easy on yourself. So back to the D string, the string of the week, play your Unitar as some would say, including Mick Goodrick, professor at Berklee. Have you ever tried to play on just one string for any amount of time? Did you ever try to solo knowing all you had was one string? Well you will now, but first let s learn those notes. So let s figure out this string. We are only going to focus on the natural notes for now. Adding the sharps and flats will be a breeze once you have this nailed. So since we know the pattern of the major scale starting on C it goes: WWhWWWh
If we want to play the C major scale, which is all natural, but we are starting on D what would we do? Let s take a look at the piano again.. Notice to get to E we need to make a whole step and to get from E to F we will use a half step, and so on, and so on. This will go on forever, in both directions. Remember again that there is no space between EF and BC So let s take a look at are single string guitar. Tuned D
Now remember to only focus on this one string. Notice the half steps where EF and BC where you don t skip any frets at all. Every where else there are spaces to in between. And those spaces in between are where accidentals fit in. For example what note do you think is in between F and G, on the 4 th fret, of the D string? It s F#, or Gb depending on how you look at it. So here are some exercises on learning this string. And let s get into reading some music. Quick Music Reading Lesson The Staff: This is the staff, it is used as a standard way to dictate notation between instruments, in the western world. When thinking of the guitar we are interested in reading music in what is called treble clef. All this means is that it dictates what notes on are on what lines and spaces. Let me explain a little further.
If you see this sign, which means treble clef (Aka the G clef); It is indicating, where the notes on the staff are. Again this is just a symbol, but it does have some significance. Where this arrow is pointing is where this treble clef, or G clef, indicates where the note G is. Notice how it is circling around that particular line. So that line is G. From this we can figure out the rest of the notes, remember the musical alphabet is only from A to G, so let s take a look; From G we can figure out what the other notes are. Some notes are on the line and some are in the spaces. It s really quite easy. There is no trick to it at all. So let s look at everyone s favorite tricks at remembering the notes and there place on the staff in treble/g clef The spaces are quite easy, spelling out the word, FACE
The lines may be a little trickier but it s not too bad Teachers have been using this phrase forever when teaching the staff. You could always come up with something on your own, this, for sure, is not a solid musical practice with no freedom, but it is pretty simple and easy to remember.