-
Memorize them like you would anything else. The most efficient way is with flash cards. Make sure not to "pass" a card if you have to think at all about it. It should be instant. Review the cards that are hard more, and the easy ones less. If you do this for five minutes a day, you will know them in a month.
-
01-13-2017 12:08 AM
-
There is a fundamental problem with the question. The guitar's finger board string/fret locations (or piano's keys, or horn's fingerings, etc.) do not correspond to notes; they are a mapping to pitches. In casual language the words "note" and "pitch" are used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.
A note is the letter name of the line or space position on the staff.
Pitch class is indicated by notes with accidentals as needed with respect to a key. Limiting the keys to those that only use single accidentals (no double sharps or double flats), there are three pitch classes for each note.
Ab A A#
Bb B B#
Cb C C#
Db D D#
Eb E E#
Fb F F#
Gb G G#
Enharmonic pitches have multiple note names depending on the key.
Ab - G#
A# - Bb
B - Cb
B# - C
C# - Db
D# - Eb
E - Fb
E# - F
F# - Gb
Therefore nine of the twelve pitches take two names, depending on the key.
[Ab G#] [A] [A# Bb] [B Cb] [B# C] [C# Db] [D] [D# Eb] [E Fb] [E# F] [F# Gb] [G]
Asking the note name of a string/fret location without a key context does not return a distinct answer for nine of the twelve possible pitch classes.
Now, if you are still with me, you may be thinking that I am being unduly pedantic, and I am a little bit. But, there are good reasons. These are the same reasons that so many are encouraging the learning of all this by reading standard notation.
This whole system of notes not being pitches, of giving individual pitches multiple note names, and of using key signatures of accidentals was designed and intended to make reading music much easier. The fundamental idea was to suppress the appearance of discontinuities in the staff caused by half steps in diatonic scales. By enforcing the note naming convention to be "only one of each letter" for the scale, and mapping these note names to the positions in the staff, and then using key signatures to instruct pitch, the result is that all diatonic scales in all keys appear in the staff without discontinuities - all present an easy to read alteration of line and space positions. Since most of this music is diatonic music, this makes reading easier, and makes sight reading and reading ahead much more possible.
Even for those who don't read, understanding this system is still important in so far as it is the foundation and basis of naming scale degrees, intervals, and the proper naming of chord tones, extensions, and their alterations.
-
This again? Look, there are 7 notes, and their attendant sharp/flats. On Monday, learn where every A is, that will give you Ab and A# as well. Do B on Tuesday. By Sunday, it's done.
-
Ha. I love a good-natured smack from a veteran. (BTW, if you're new, put ronjazz on your "follow" list, and ponder these comments carefully. Don't tell him who said so....) :-)
Originally Posted by ronjazz
-
That is a clever approach I have never tried. Originally Posted by ronjazz
My method, still in process, has been to memorize a few key note locations - A, D, E G and Bb - and do quick math to find the rest on the fly.
I tend to play movable chords (3 or 4 strings only) and this has worked pretty well.
But I am going to try your note of the day for a week idea !
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
If you have to think "A is here, so A# is here", you are too late. Train yourself to know where all the notes are instantly. Originally Posted by ronjazz
-
if you're new, just think everything I said in my post re ron, but OPPOSITE.If you have to think "A is here, so A# is here", you are too late. Train yourself to know where all the notes are instantly.
-
Pretty sure, with some work each day, that's exactly what ron's idea will do. Originally Posted by Jonzo
Say 'em and play 'em, I say.
-
You need to understand how the notes are organized on the guitar.
Decide on a fingering system and organizational fretboard layout.
Put the time in to have that become instinctive. (the fingerings and fretboard)
I'm one of those guys that can sight read with horn sections. You'll never really be able to sight read well and know and understand the notes without having a basic organizational fretboard reference.
Now your ready for the notes to become instinctive. (remember where the notes are in any context.
Generally a little of this approach and some of that approach... ends up producing lousy technique, lousy skills and a very non functional understanding and ability to perform Jazz. (without basically memorizing everything you play).
-
I'm keen to get on top of my reading this year - which is by no means awful, but just not as good as I'd like it. Originally Posted by Reg
Do you happen to have any vids etc going into this in some detail? Your advice re: Bellson was massively helpful..
-
Reading all over the fretboard is the best way I know.
-
You will probably eventually learn them instantly through brute force repetition, but it is a somewhat counter productive method. It could even create a long term problem. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, I found memorization boring and would use any trick I could that would allow me to pass a test without doing memorization. I already knew that 8 X 4 was 32, and that I could derive 8 X 8 by thinking "8 X 4 = 32 and 32 X 2 = 64". I formed a habit of deriving 8 X 8 instead of memorizing it. It was good enough to get me through the test without memorizing 8 X 8, and it is still good enough for me to use today. But musical thinking has to be much faster. You must eliminate extra steps.
(Here is an opportunity for someone can say that playing the guitar is an art, and that examples about learning multiplication are irrelevant.)
Practice what you want to get good at. If you want to get good at instantly recalling, practice that. If you want to get good at deriving note locations from other notes, practice that.
Your first step should be to attempt to name or find the note without using any other steps. So that is the test. Can I name a note at a given location instantly? Can I find a given note on a given string instantly? After you test yourself, go ahead and figure out if you got it right based on other notes and information. Figuring things out does aide learning. But if deriving the location from other notes is your first step, or if you consider a note "learned" when you can derive its location, you will slow down your progress toward instant recall, and you might form a bad habit that will be hard to break later.
Some might be wondering "How do I improve a skill that I either have or do not have?" You start by doing closely spaced tests on small sets of notes. At first minutes apart, and then eventually days apart.
Most memories will fade if you don't use them, so you either need to use your knowledge while you practice, or review periodically. You can do a lot of guitar practice without using this knowledge. So test yourself periodically to see if you really still remember, and review as needed.Last edited by Jonzo; 01-14-2017 at 10:41 AM.
-
I disagree with Jonzo. Sight reading/knowing all the notes on fretboard is purely mechanical skill and should be learned so that it becomes absolutely completely automatic. It takes a LO . . . OT of time but is essential for a professional musician. And time is all that it takes. Time is cheap. Forget a TV-show and you get 40 hours. That's enough to learn all those notes.
-
The OP was about learning note names and locations, which is what I addressed. I recently learned the 96 notes of the mandolin fretboard in about 3 hours, so the guitar should take about 5. But take as much time as you like; that's a personal preference, not a disagreement.
-
We have all kinds of song books. I took a Frank Sinatra book with tunes I like and started to play notes only and then play the tune in different places on the fretboard. I did that everyday for a least an hour. We have a Hammond Auto-vari, like a drum machine, that helped give me a sense of tempo with the single notes, it's actually a lot of fun. I found that the ticket to learning the notes on the fretboard was "not allowing myself" to look at the fretboard ever, while playing. Within short order, not only do you know where all the notes are, and this will sound silly, but you can almost feel where they are. Just to test this idea, try going from the C 1st string 8th Fret to the C 2nd string 3rd fret..no looking please. I'm not sure there's great value in that, but there might be. Then when I decided to think of the 12th Fret as the Nut. Everything fell into place. It worked very well for me, hope it helps you too.
Regards,
Jim
-
I started to learn the neck when :
- I stopped focussing on positions and shapes
- I started the bass and I figured out that it didn't have only two strings
-
Speaking of which, chord melody really helps with the first three. Originally Posted by Lionelsax
-
You mean A D G string of the bass I guess. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
When you start to play the bass for real, E string becomes an extra string.
-
The other thing I have my students do is memorize the notes across the 3rd fret, 5th fret, 7th fret 10th and 12th of course. This is pretty easy to do. And when you know those as reference points it's easy to find the note in between.
-
No. I meant treble. CM really helps with the top-down. Especially E & B. Originally Posted by Lionelsax
-
Hum, E and B were the easiest for me, not the same with G and D, that's why I was talking about the bass. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I've never been into chord melody, or a little bit although I have played more voicings now since a friend gave me a ukulele for my 40th birthday.
-
I think learning the note names up and down each string is the hardest. Obviously for me the 2 low strings came first because I could learn the root for the barre chords. But ultimately for learning the notes across the fretboard, . . . Learning them per string was counter-intuitive, at least for me. ACROSS the strings is what did it. I rarely play up single strings. I play across them, so knowing the notes at the 10th fret was easier and better, for me.
-
That's what I did, too. My goal was to learn the notes on each string for every fret on my guitar that had a dot/inlay on it. In my case at the time, that meant frets 3, 5, 7, and 9 (I didn't worry about 12 and above, since it's all a repeat of what came before). I figured I learn the "in-between" notes just by knowing that if one fret had a "G" and the other had an "A", the fret between must be G#/Ab. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
For example, the third fret notes are (low to high) G, C, F, Bb, D, G
To help myself remember, I made up mnemonic sentences for each fret area and said them to myself with and without my guitar, and quizzed myself every so often when I sat down to play. Once this became easy, I'd choose a note and try to find it everywhere on the neck.
There are probably lots of ways to get this information into your head, but the important thing is to just pick something and do it every day until you know it. The method you use is more important than the method you choose.
-
Oh, dude. You can't just leave it there. Give us the mnemonics. :-) Originally Posted by snailspace
-
Learning by string means you have to find the note among 12 choices. Learning by fret means you have to find the note among 5 choices, resulting in a greater possibility of randomly getting a right answer without knowing the information. If I say "Where is G on the first fret?", you are more than twice as likely to guess right than if I say "Where is G on the second string?"
The coordinates for every note are a string and a fret, so there is no getting away from either as a reference. But eventually you want to be thinking about neither. If someone says "Bb", you want to see those Bbs, both in your mental fretboard image and on your actual fretboard. If someone points to a coordinate, you want the note names for that coordinate to just pop into your head.
I think creating a mental image as you drill this information would be helpful. "See" Bb on the fretboard in your mind. Get away from roadmaps and reference points. In the end, if you want to know where a note is instantly, A# is just as easy as A. When those mental images and note names pop into your head immediately, you really know your fretboard. It is like Pavlovian conditioning, where a given stimulus brings a conditioned response.
(In drummers even more so, because there is actual drool.)
Last edited by Jonzo; 01-15-2017 at 03:09 PM.
Reply With Quote
Moffa Mithra
Today, 08:31 AM in For Sale