The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Hi, I wanted to ask you guys if you could recommend me any special techniques or practice habits to help me learn the notes on the fretboard smoothly. I have been playing for about 2 years (mostly messing around with tabs, learning familiar riffs, etc), I took lessons for most of that time until recently. I had at one point learned to play Autumn Leaves leading the melody somewhere on the 2nd string, 5th fret, and also one position of e minor scale starting @ the 12th fret (very basic application back then). I was still very new then so chords were very discouraging at that time. For the past few months I have been working out of a book my teacher lent me "The Sprague Technique - Peter Sprague". I have learned the C major scale, triad, and arpeggio, all 5 positions of each (before they repeat at the 12th fret). Only now I feel I won't be able to progress until I can know the notes I am playing on the fly, opening up things like improvisation, and more creative composition. Right now I know the notes for the open position and the first position in C major scale (G-A-B-C-D-E-etc.). My thing is that I am pretty slow at it. I read here Guitar Note Learning - How Do You Memorize The Notes on A Guitar Neck? that it could take a while to learn the fretboard, which makes sense. It also suggested learning the notes by fret. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thank you.

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  3. #2

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    quick way to do it if you have any sort of understanding of he 12 note system.

    memorize all the fret markers on your guitar and what notes they are. From there each note is # or Flat depending on which direction you are going.

    IE if you take the 5th fret of your D string and memorize that is G, 2nd line of the staff then the 4th fret should be Gb (F#) and the 6th fret should be G# or Ab. Then the next marker is the 7th fret.

    Or learn to read music in position and in closed fingerings such as only on 3 strings, 2 strings etc. That'll teach you fast.

  4. #3

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    Nice Jake...I have my students start on the 1st string and learn up and down chromatically...sharps up and flats down....then the 2nd through 6th...only one string at a time..from one lesson to the next..just this string I tell them...it will take 6 weeks to learn them but they do learn them..my technique on that...time on the instrument...pierre...small steps inf.tank..

  5. #4

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    I used to have a poster on my wall back in high school that had all the note on it. When ever I got stuck it was a quick reference for me to. I learned the fretboard pretty quick that way, that and it was always there.

  6. #5

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    Hi,

    When I started taking lessons (seriously) my teacher had me learn all the "white" notes on each string up and down vertically. White notes mean the white keys on a piano (no sharps or flats: black notes or keys). An excercise to practice this is go up and down each string to a metronome and adjust your hand position Ie: 1st finger 1st fret, 3rd finger 3rd fret; then move 1st finger to 5th fret etc....

    It also helps to say the names of the notes as you play them until you can identify each one.

    This initial process helped out greatly when learning intervals and modes.

    Happy plucking!

  7. #6
    Thanks a lot for all the feedback everyone, I'm going to try some of this out a little later.

    Also, its cool that you have buttons to implement tab directly into posts, that very relevant considering the nature of this site/forum.

  8. #7

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    If I'm not late here the following site helped me quite a lot in learning the fretboard:

    Welcome To The Essential Guitar Guide

  9. #8

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    Thanks for the links folks.Very useful and will certainly help my understanding of the fretboard

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by inf.tank
    Hi, I wanted to ask you guys if you could recommend me any special techniques or practice habits to help me learn the notes on the fretboard smoothly. I have been playing for about 2 years (mostly messing around with tabs, learning familiar riffs, etc), I took lessons for most of that time until recently. I had at one point learned to play Autumn Leaves leading the melody somewhere on the 2nd string, 5th fret, and also one position of e minor scale starting @ the 12th fret (very basic application back then). I was still very new then so chords were very discouraging at that time. For the past few months I have been working out of a book my teacher lent me "The Sprague Technique - Peter Sprague". I have learned the C major scale, triad, and arpeggio, all 5 positions of each (before they repeat at the 12th fret). Only now I feel I won't be able to progress until I can know the notes I am playing on the fly, opening up things like improvisation, and more creative composition. Right now I know the notes for the open position and the first position in C major scale (G-A-B-C-D-E-etc.). My thing is that I am pretty slow at it. I read here Guitar Note Learning - How Do You Memorize The Notes on A Guitar Neck? that it could take a while to learn the fretboard, which makes sense. It also suggested learning the notes by fret. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thank you.

    thanks for the website

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by nomelite
    If I'm not late here the following site helped me quite a lot in learning the fretboard:

    Welcome To The Essential Guitar Guide

    hey thanks for the website

  12. #11

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    My guitar prof (name of Tim Bedner) is a big advocate of saying and palying... Every day we do a 12 key routine of spelling a key, the arpeggio of the I ii and V in all of the CAGED positions, as well as spelling its ivnersions across the neck. It's a very efficient way of mapping out the fretboard.

    Otherwise, regular reading at varying tempos.

  13. #12
    I know I'm bumping an old thread here but I wanted to say thanks for the advice and links again. I ended up grinding an exercise so that I can now go up and down each fret on each string at a somewhat decent speed (I still have to think a little, but greatly improved over a few months ago). In maybe another month, I should reach a level of understanding that I'm happy with.

  14. #13

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    You know, it may sound odd, but the fastest way to progress learning the fretboard and playing is practicing sightreading.
    It may sound counter intuitive to start reading before you know the fretboard, but it works very well if you have the patience and dedication, plus talk about killing a lot of birds in one stone.

  15. #14

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    .......maybe try something like Guitar Pro (I have version 5 now), a well-known tab editor. Load a demo song file (or one you can find on the net) with the fretboard on the screen, slow the tempo right down, to about 10bpm. Press play, and the played notes flash up on the fretboard. At this speed, you have time to glance down to the notation (or you can move the fretboard and glance up) and back, to help with sight reading also. Increase speed as your skills increase! You could even mouse in a sequence of notes, for example around a certain area of the fretboard, and play looped for a real brain-crunching session. Just follow what you see and hear on your guitar.


    It's a snip of a programme at the price. You can download the demo....I think it has full functionality for a period. If you could find the old GP4 demo, that had a 24-bar save limit but lasted forever. Also has chord and scale banks, and so can be turned into a personalised study centre.
    centre. I don't consider it expensive.

    Nearly forgot......about the chord banks...the sounds are only midi, but if you time your mouse-clicking right, you can play chord tunes, and hear the differences in the voicing. I think this is well cool.
    (See, I've only been in the forum a few weeks and my English is already getting jazzified!!)
    Last edited by wordsmith; 02-07-2009 at 06:21 PM. Reason: change 'site' to 'sight'...........sigh!

  16. #15

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    .........something came to mind yesterday, which made sense to me at least. Probably in common with others, I found it easy to learn the notes from the nut up to the fifth fret.....then it got a bit muddy. Like, look at the third string at the fifth....what's the note four frets up from that? The milliseconds drag by......oh, yes, an E!

    This is not rocket science, so why the hesitation? Maybe a kind of psychological blocking syndrome.....why, I would have no idea. I have talked with foreign language students for several years, and they still fail to use grammar tenses correctly.

    Why? They get stressed on Day One when the teacher first gives them the book, and immediately convince themselves they will never be able to get it. They slammed the door shut on themselves! I am sure there are books on the subject....none of them mine!

    Anyway, my little idea was this.....keep in mind that once you're at the fifth fret, there are always FOUR natural notes to go to the twelfth, on every string. And the note at the twelfth is the open string note, so that leaves only three to think about. And because there are four notes to go, each string must (and in fact does) have a half-step from one note to the next somewhere between the fifth and twelfth. Half-steps are always up to C and up to F. Get an old-fashioned piece of paper and an inked quill and mark these on a fretboard sketchout. Use this as your reference point.......all the other note spacings will be two frets.

    See what I'm doing for myself.....task shrinking, as I've just dubbed it. So if you are on third string G at the fifth-fret C and slide way up to just before the twelfth somewhere, it will obviously be nearer to G than C.....F or Fsharp, something like that. Slide up not so far, and you'll be on D or Eflat , somewhere closer to C. Keep doing this until you've got it on the G string. Then chose another string, and when you've got that, go back to the G string to re-inforce that in your brain, and so on.....

    Have a think about why the dots are where they are, and post up the reason as you see it, perhaps? I personally have no idea, but I will think about it when I've posted this up.

    Maybe others have their own ideas along this line of thinking....I would love to read them.
    Last edited by wordsmith; 02-08-2009 at 04:37 AM. Reason: insert 'natural' after FOUR...

  17. #16

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    My guitar dots fall on fret# 3/5/7/9/12/15/17/19 on a 20 fret instrument.
    Every note if it's not on a dotted fret is adjacent to a dotted fret.
    I believe this is the main logic behind their placement .

  18. #17

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    I have been using sight warrior to teach my students where all the notes are on the neck. It is very good but could be improved by adding the notes above the 12th fret.

    wiz

  19. #18

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    Something I found useful was to stop playing in certain areas. I know the first four frets really well (like most guitarists) so I stopped using them and started playing, reading, noodling etc. in the 5th position. Now I actually feel more comfortable reading there and I find it a nicer place to hang out for melody playing.
    At some point I'll move to to the 9th - that'll cover the whole fretboard so slotting in the other positions shouldn't then be too difficult.

  20. #19

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    Barre chords worked for me. I wasn't particularly wanting to know the notes, but chugging through popular songs (beatles for me) meant I had to know how to move basic E,A,D,C,G chords up and down to get the Ab, Eb ...etc
    Once I could do that I found when I did want to know the notes I already them at least on the bass strings.

  21. #20

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    My basic idea is, we must know by instincts, without a blink and definitely not calculate. Like all we know without calculation that first string first fret is C#. But what about string G 11th fret? If you have to calculate this (like a) you step back an octave and see what is on string A 9th fret, or start counting from string G 7th fret which is a "well known" D, that's a trap. (well I know, start from 12th it is G, so 11th must be... Do not do that.)

    Here is a practice:

    Start metronome on a suitable tempo, can be very slow first.
    Pick a string, say G. Now say (literally) C, and in rhythm in the next metronome tick, pick C on your chosen string (sorry I just forget what fret it is :-) Then go in the circle of fifth, say G and pick G, say D then pick D. All must be done on the single string.
    Focus on your week points, probably strings D, G but you are free to practice on A and B or even good old E.

    Hell of stressing, and boring. but it works. The goal is, not thinking, not calculating, just knowing.

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gabor
    Like all we know without calculation that first string first fret is C#.
    my life has been a lie

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by joe2758
    my life has been a lie
    I need to buy a new guitar...mine isn't working.

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by joe2758
    my life has been a lie
    Just for the record that was intentional. Putting smile after it would ruin the whole thing.
    I hope you all will read the part after it.

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by wizard3739
    I have been using sight warrior to teach my students where all the notes are on the neck. It is very good but could be improved by adding the notes above the 12th fret.

    wiz
    Sight Warrior? Never heard of it. What is it?

  26. #25

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    Lots of good ideas here. What's been working for me is (finally) forcing myself to work thru the 2nd half of the Mickey Baker which is in standard notation (no tab).

    I feel like I'm killing 3 birds with 1 stone. Learning to read standard notation, the learning the notes on the fret board, and learning some useful Jazz language at the same time. It's working better than anything I've tried before. I still find myself calculating at times, but I'm doing it less and less.

    Just throwing in my 2 cents on this resurrected thread. There's more than one way to skin a (jazz) cat. Find what works best for you and then put in the work. There's no easy way.