Learning the fretboard

[Ceejay]

So, I've been learning chord theory, intervals etc recently which is all good and fine and I can play a a few chords, each in a couple of different positions (maj 7, m7, dom7, 9ths, 6ths, sus4, dim, half dim) because I know the shapes.

But, I'm ashamed to say though, that other than the E and A strings, I really don't know the fretboard. It's so easy as a guitarist to just learn shapes and box patterns (minor pentatonic being a classic example), and I think this is seriously holding me back as I'm finding it hard to make the connection between the theory and the playing. And vice versa.

So, what are some tried and tested ways of learning the notes? CAGED system, which I've only just heard of?

Thanks!

CJ.

[coolvinny]

I find that putting together chord melody arrangements is the best way to learn new shapes and 'see' the fretboard. Personally, I get a lot of mileage out of this approach.

If you know all your low-E and A position chords, then I'd say you should focus on the top four strings next.

[JakeAcci]

Get the Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick! It's the most complete and thorough guide to fretboard knowledge for the improvising guitarist.

Shapes are useful, but they aren't actually knowing the fretboard.

I do like CAGE, but it has limitations, as all methods do.

[whatswisdom]

So, what are some tried and tested ways of learning the notes?

jonnypac's book is great if you want a crash course in fingerboard recognition. He's got some really nice maps with all the notes and intervals clearly illustrated. Advancing Guitarist is, of course, a classic.

[RyanM]

Well, if you want to learn the notes, a place to start is to just learn the "white notes" on each string, one string at a time. Pick one string this week, etc.

Some reading studies book would be helpful.

Another thing is to work on one note at a time: find each C on the neck in each octave, etc.

You should at least have an understanding of caged, which is about the octave shapes in 5 positions on the neck. I think of it as two octave shapes: the one that crosses two strings, and the other that crosses three. Caged is useful because wherever you put a finger on the board you should see that note in two adjacent octave positions, which will help you find the notes on strings you don't know.

I've moved on from caged; I generally think in terms of drop-2 and drop-3 inversions up the neck. Consider, for example, a G7 drop-3 chord at the 3rd fret (root position). in that "position" you also have the following drop-2 shapes for G7: two shapes on the middle four strings (the 5th on top and the 7th on top) and two shapes on the top four strings (root on top, and third on top). This gives you all four inversion in one position. So those 5 voicings form one position in my mind. Then there would be 3 other positions up the neck, centred on each drop-3 inversion.
You can extend this to thinking in terms of major and minor keys, so you have 7 diatonic chords in each position (5 inversions each).

[youns]

I was just like you a few months ago. I learned all the notes while at the same time doing ear training. I use the ear training tool from iwasdoingallright.com. It gives you random intervals, so random notes. I practiced playing these intervals with 2 strings and one strings set. Then I practiced playing the intervals in every position each time. Always making visual notes in my mind where the notes are located.

I also practiced and still practice a lot mental visualization when I am away from the instrument, it helps a lot to solidify what you learned and what you are learning. Now I know the notes down cold. With this approach you can maximize your practice time.

I do the same approach as RyanM to see different inversions in one position, still working on that,

Good luck !

[Nuff Said]

I also practiced and still practice a lot mental visualization when I am away from the instrument, it helps a lot to solidify what you learned

Good advice.

What ever method you choose for mapping the fretboard, Sing each note name as you play them. (This is very important, without singing the notes you may fall into the trap of just learning patterns, like many of us have.)

Nuff

[pauln]

JakeAcci - "Shapes are useful, but they aren't actually knowing the fretboard."

I agree with that - visual strategies don't "connect" to the sound.

I would add to this that letter names of notes are useful, but they aren't actually knowing the fretboard. Verbal strategies don't "connect" to the sound.

Nuff said - "Sing each note name as you play them."
That is how to "connect" to the sound.

Ultimately you want to be able to play what you hear (including what you sing if only in your mind) - directly and instantly, and effortlessly.

In the long you discover that your hands are blind, and they are dumb, but they aren't deaf...

[JakeAcci]

Helpful to know the names of things to communicate with others, in many senses of the word "communicate"

Helpful to have access to those named-things in many orientations on the instrument

Essential to know the sounds of your own vocabulary

Useless to know the sounds and names but not how to access them.

Un-musical to know the names and be able to access them but not know the sounds

A little cumbersome, depending on context, to know the sounds and how to access them but not know the names. Many forms of communication with other musicians can become difficult.

[JakeAcci]

There was a similar thread on AAJ a whle ago, and I wrote the below, which didn't seem to promote any further discussion, but I still stand by this as a method. The basic idea is, learn actually phrases and music, analyze that music, find different ways to play it, and then you're learning the fretboard, training your ear, gaining vocabulary, etc. I think it's much more useful than scale fingerings.

Maybe it was a little "tl;dr" but here it is:

I am a guitarist. My two cents...

I might subvert this whole idea and offer this (bear with me):

Take a phrase from a head or solo that really resonates with you. Find the way to play it on the guitar that sounds the best and feels the most comfortable to execute.

Then analyze the phrase in a variety of different ways, for example:

How does each note of the phrase relate to the chord changes (if that analysis doesn't seem to make sense, consider that the phrase might be delaying or anticipating the harmonic rhythm - playing the changes ahead or behind of where the rhythm section is supposed to be playing)

What are the intervals between each note of the phrase

If you must...what scale or scales does the phrase involve

After that process what you've just done is understood some music in a specific region of the fretboard. You've understood a short melody and I guess you could say you've found an application for a certain fingering, which sort of answers your initial question. But it's sort of the opposite - you've found a fingering to suit an application, which is, in my opinion, far more useful.

Then do the same thing for the same phrase in all twelve keys and a few different octaves.

Then try improvising with the phrase...maybe same notes different rhythm, or different notes same rhythm, or try to alter the phrase to fit a different set of chord changes.

For variety's sake, consider several "best" fingerings for the phrase.

So, rather than learning X major scale fingerings and Y melodic minor fingerings, in this process you are actually learning real music, music that you like, and figuring out how to apply it to the guitar. Whether the phrase naturally falls into a CAGED fingering or a 3nps fingering or climbs up the fretboard or whatever is mostly irrelevant.

If you find even just two sets of fingerings for ten different phrases, and play them in a few octaves and all keys, you've accomplished what scale-fingering practice is meant to accomplish PLUS you are learning vocabulary and learning how to improvise with the jazz language. I really believe this process accomplishes a lot, and if I only had 30 minutes a day to work on fretboard knowledge, I'd do this rather than practice scale fingerings.

I definitely have practiced scales and different scale fingerings. It's interesting to see them, but my improvisational vocabulary comes from the above process, plain and simple. I could say I've learned scale fingerings through this process, but I don't think of it that way...what good is a scale compared to a melody.

Not to mention some phrases naturally push you out of position playing anyway. It's a good challenge to try to stay in position, just as an exercise, but being practical a lot of things are much easier to play if you shift around a bit....but honestly I think the nature of that is discovered through trying to apply good melodies (heads, solos) to the guitar.

[chrisobrien]

JakeAcci, that's some top notch advice!

I'm in the same position as the OP, I've developed a moderately sized chord library via the CAGED system at the expense of fretboard knowledge, so now I'm trying to backtrack and learn what I should of learned in the first place - the fretboard itself, which notes make up which chords and scales, etc.

It's very tedious, and almost a little disheartening considering I'm finding myself backtracking to learn some pretty basic stuff, but all in all I'm confident it will make me a better musician and guitarist in the long run.

[Nuff Said]

A few things I found out years ago.

It is easier if you play the Major scales in the order of least accidentals.

Also start learning each pattern from fret 7, so the fingers start with less stretching.

Nuff

[JonnyPac]

jonnypac's book is great if you want a crash course in fingerboard recognition. He's got some really nice maps with all the notes and intervals clearly illustrated. Advancing Guitarist is, of course, a classic.

I learned the E and A strings back in my grunge days and then learned the rest via octave shapes. Those alone are 50% of the fretboard, mind you! I took what I knew and filled in the gaps in my memory. Now I have the full neck ready to go 99.99% of the time- If I slip, I just "octave" a note location I know better. I also filled in fretboard templates with pencil from memory when I had no access to a guitar (traveling, at night while other sleep, etc).

[rpguitar]

Learning the fretboard is an evolutionary pursuit, with one idea building on the one before it. Rome wasn't built in a day. Let's say you know the notes on the bottom two strings. Voila; you now know the high E string as well. Only three more to go!

Next comes your intervals. Learn first where ascending octaves, 5ths, 4ths, and Major/minor 3rds are in relation to the bottom two strings. At the same time, learn the actual intervals of each letter note (i.e. the 5th above C = G).

Now you'll know a whole bunch of notes on the D string as well. Apply the same approach to intervals for notes on the D string, and the G string starts to reveal itself.

Octaves occur in particular, easy-to-see shapes that skip a string. So that's another way to learn notes on the D string based on those on the low E, and notes on the G string based on the A string. Same for notes on the B string based on the D string.

[alwaysharp]

Here's what I did back in the day and it really opened up the fretboard for me. I would pick one key a day (I would go through the circle of 5ths i.e. monday key of C, tuesday key of F or G etc etc) and I would run Maj 7, min 7 and dom 7 arpeggios through the "caged" system. I would do one arpeggio at a time i.e. maj 7 in pattern one, then pattern two, pattern 3 etc. After that apreggio I would do the corresponding scale; major, dorian, mixolydian. After I'd finished the arp and the scale I would do the arp and the scale one string at a time. After that I would do the process over with minor 7th and then with the dominant 7th. This did wonders for opening up the fretboard for me. The whole thing can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on where you're at. For example, when I first did this some arps felt really uncomfortable so the whole process took a lot longer, nowadays I could do it as a warmup in about 20 minutes. Now, to notice results from this it took (for me) between 2 and 3 months. But it unlocked the fretboard like crazy for me. Also, after doing it for ages, I updated the excercise to different arps and scales. I say give it a shot, and for me it was really important to only do one key a day. That way it's not overwhelming and you can also see how all those different chords but with the same tonic relate to each other.

That was my method anyway, good luck to you. Btw, I was doing that years ago and, although I'm not doing that so much anymore, I'm always doing some sort of exercise to continually expand the fretboard.

[Morpeli]

I subscribed to this online 'school' - I can now pretty much tell what any note is on the fingerboard within 1 to 2 seconds uisng their method. I don't know if that helps?

http://rnbacademy.com/main/


I liked the method so much, I have joined their theory course. So far it's learning a complete different and original way to play pentatonics anywhere on the fingerboard, then it will be learning to name any note in any chord anywhere on the fingerboard (as far as I know...) and then it will be playing the major scale anywhere. The school is more focused on rock guitarists but I think they are quite fresh and innovative in how they teach you different memory techniques.

[eddy b.]

If you can read standard notation, I think the first George Van Epps Method book,(not the harmonic mechanisms series, but the Guitar Method) is really helpful. He writes out all the harmonized scales in triads and plugs them into the string groups. It really helped me make the transition from playing shapes to Knowing the notes of the Voicings. It is a limitless study but I'd say it took about about a year before it crept into my playing.

[whatswisdom]

...the first George Van Epps Method book...is really helpful. He writes out all the harmonized scales in triads and plugs them into the string groups...make the transition from playing shapes to Knowing the notes of the Voicings.

A great book! Thanks for the reminder about this often overlooked gem.

[whatswisdom]

I learned...via octave shapes. Those alone are 50% of the fretboard. ...If I slip, I just "octave" a note location I know better.

I've been playing a great exercise lately: 1st position. Key: Gb. Play the major scale in octaves up to the 9th and back down to the 7th. Full range of the position. Super for left hand development while learning all the notes in Gb.

[Drumbler]

I suggest learning 7th chord arpeggios for major, minor, dominant, and diminished chords up and down the fretboard, with roots on strings 6,5,4, and 3.

By learning the arpeggios and the associated roots, you will learn the fretboard.

Most likely you already know the notes on the 6,5,and 1 strings. Learn the 2 string too.

[Kojo27]

Get the Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick! It's the most complete and thorough guide to fretboard knowledge for the improvising guitarist.

Shapes are useful, but they aren't actually knowing the fretboard.

I do like CAGE, but it has limitations, as all methods do.

Amen, amen, amen. And Goodrick's book can help get you out of the CAGE.

[trader]

So, I've been learning chord theory, intervals etc recently which is all good and fine and I can play a a few chords, each in a couple of different positions (maj 7, m7, dom7, 9ths, 6ths, sus4, dim, half dim) because I know the shapes.

But, I'm ashamed to say though, that other than the E and A strings, I really don't know the fretboard. It's so easy as a guitarist to just learn shapes and box patterns (minor pentatonic being a classic example), and I think this is seriously holding me back as I'm finding it hard to make the connection between the theory and the playing. And vice versa.

So, what are some tried and tested ways of learning the notes? CAGED system, which I've only just heard of?

Thanks!

CJ.

I've found Barrett Tagliarino's Musicians Institute Guitar Fretboard Workbook really good, also his Guitar Reading Workbook on music notation, both paperbacks and inexpensive.