Notes on the fretboard.

[Bob65C]

I've noticed what seems to me as a lot of folks mentioning they don't know all the notes on the fretboard. Sometimes I find out something my teacher left out,but many thanks to him for getting up to speed here. There are lots of ways to get this done. Tommy Tedescos book has the exercises that are random notes on a single string ,all 6 strings one at a time. If you learn the 7 modes in position plus the octave. The different roots for each mode will stand out after a while. Also there is a pattern called the diamond and z. The only place I've seen it is in Jim Gleasons book. I just Googled it and nothing came up. The point is all of the same note over the whole fretboard makes the diamond and z pattern. Another way is to always know the octaves up and down from any note. Also the same note on as many strings as it is. Ex,C on 20 fret low E. 15th A,10 D string 5th G-string 1st on Bstring. All the same note. Hope this helps.

[mr. beaumont]

Best advice I got: However you learn it, learn it!

[AllanAllen]

I did Mel Bay book one into Mickey Baker's Jazz and Hot Guitar. You have to know the notes to get music from the page to your hands.

[macuaig]

I’m just starting guitar, and this surprised me as well. I took a few lessons and after guiding me to play & name each note on every string, he said, “90% of guitar players can’t do that”.

I’ve been thinking of the fretboard as six piano keyboards slid against each other, and had to draw this out to see it. It seems to be more of a puzzle than a useful perspective, but I wouldn’t mind getting another take. Is this fretboard-to-keyboard relationship of any practical value as you play? As I’ve said on another forum, it’s a revelation to me, but then at this point so is a barre chord. Thanks.

[EastwoodMike]

I’ve used the keyboard analogy to help my Son understand the overlapping complexity, with piano’s obvious visual advantage of black vs white keys. In the key if C every note is physically equidistant (white keys) but on the guitar you need to ‘stretch’ the keyboard so that the ‘black’ keys take as much space as a white key and now you have something that approaches frets.

someone on this forum once noted that ad an average you can play each note in 3.25 locations or something like that. Some more, some less.

I used the Solo app when learning, pinning each of the chromatic notes on a string chasing a circle of 4ths around. Once I felt at speed across all 22 frets I moved to the next string.

[ragman1]

Play tunes in different keys. Or use a book, etc. You'll gradually start remembering the notes.

[Bob65C]

I don't play keys but I have a way of outlining the black keys by playing whole tones, 3 to a string then 4. It outlines the 2 then 3 black keys.

[GuyBoden]

As a teenager, I stuck stickers with the names of the notes behind each fret on the fretboard.

I used flats only, no sharps, I still prefer naming notes as flats, even today.

[ragman1]

I don't play keys but I have a way of outlining the black keys by playing whole tones, 3 to a string then 4. It outlines the 2 then 3 black keys.

You're not playing a damn piano, Bob. You're fooling yourself. Drop the piano and start reading the notes from the music and finding them on the guitar in the context of a tune. Without a tune they'll have no meaning.

If you can't read them off the music then why do you need the notes? That has no meaning either.

[Lionelsax]

For a reason you ignore, I use voice range vocabulary in my job.
In order to explain I take the guitar.

E soprano
B mezzo-soprano
G alto
D tenor
A baritone
E bass

I know it doesn't help.

Well... What can I say.

Using a capo helped me to learn the notes on the neck.

I play other instruments so I know what a note means.

[AaronMColeman]

The 5th and 6th strings tend to have the bass/root notes and they become easy to remember. The 1st string is just the 6th all over again. So now you have half of the guitar done.

The 4th is the same as the 6th up two frets. Now you have 2/3 of the guitar done.

In a minor pentatonic the first finger 3rd string is the root again, and a lot of players will naturally know this. We are 5/6ths of the way there!

That pesky 2nd string throws off all patterns and doesn't have a quick reference for me to work with. That one is just memorization for me. I know 5th fret is E (which puts G on 8th fret), and obviously 12th fret is B again. So with those touchpoints I can usually get the notes on the 2nd string. But this is the hardest by far for me.

Others may have better ways of remembering these things but for me that's what works for individual notes. All of this comes from just playing, so my thought is play more and the notes will start to show themselves in most places.

[rolijen]

Guitar Fretboard Note Trainer on the App Store

The ’Find The Note’ exercises in this app is so helpful. In use it with my students early on. Fun and fairly quickly they start to understand the layout and repetitions. Pretty soon, they can name the notes faster than I can!

[rpjazzguitar]

My suggestion is to learn to read. Use graded material (I've posted specific books before).

Read all over the neck.

You'll know the fretboard in a few months and you'll also know how to read.

[Christian Miller]

Bad dad cabbage face

[st.bede]

I have used a bunch of systems, to memorize the notes.

The one I like the best is just learn to root chords on all of the strings and play through songs per/string at a steady tempo.

There is a lot of jumping and it is awkward, but if you do it, you will learn all the notes.

It can be difficult for the mind to translate a grip into a single note. In other words, it is easy to know the note when you grab a chord, but when are ripping single notes, you might not have that connection.

I have developed solutions for that also, but first you have to have the notes nailed as chord roots.

(The progenitor, to the development of this approach, was back when I first took a jazz improvised class. We would play things through the circle. I realized that if I forced myself to play them on a single string, it was more useful then just following a pattern.

Many solutions to learning music, is just to make things a little harder as you go along. We all know that.

So stop being lazy… I am just pointing out a phenomenon, that we all fall into: of course me too. A musician without a strong sense of humility is a very unhappy person).

[jackalGreen]

The one I like the best is just learn to root chords on all of the strings and play through songs per/string at a steady tempo.

There is a lot of jumping and it is awkward, but if you do it, you will learn all the notes.

It can be difficult for the mind to translate a grip into a single note. In other words, it is easy to know the note when you grab a chord, but when are ripping single notes, you might not have that connection.

Very good. I'm still not completely cold on every note, every string, up to the twelfth fret, but the way I'm interpreting this is being able to create any kind of chord, any voicing, just by (eventually) intuition.

You know, even just beginning to learn a tune, be like "Yeah, I want b9 with the augmented fifth on top, third in the middle....make it so!"

And keep doing it while comping, just altering chords and their inversions however one feels like it.

I suspect that's quite a long ways to go, maybe even for many good guitarists, but it seems reasonable to me as a way-off future ability.

Or I'm a way off, and that's an entirely odd goal that's not realistic?

[tbeltrans]

Within the first few pages into Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry, he describes an easy exercise to gradually learn all the notes on the fretboard. It worked well for me and even was very helpful for learning my way around my 7 string guitars.

I don't feel it would be legal to display the page here, so look at Section 1 (page 5) "Fingerboard Chart and String Relationships". He obviously felt it was important to know the notes on the fretboard because he starts with that before going into the meat of the book.

Tony

[Jimmy blue note]

I have a macaque that knows all the notes. Well, finding one wasn't easy but it's not exactly rocket science; a monkey can do it. Every morning he'd reach into a hat, pull out one of two dozen index cards (flats and sharps mixed equally) and he'd hold it up. I'd have two seconds to find that note in all the locations on the fingerboard. If I hadn't gotten to the point where I could do it without thinking, he'd come over to me and thwack me with a nerf bat. It was brutal first, but over a short amount of time, I got to know them in a visual and in a tactile way. I don't mind the monkey, and every time I'd be frustrated, I just look over at him. Humbled by a monkey? I got over it quickly.

Now he allows me to find the note and he holds up another card with a chromatic interval. I have to sing it and find it on the fingerboard.

If I get frustrated or overwhelmed, he doesn't get it, I'm only human afterall.

[AllanAllen]

My suggestion is to learn to read. Use graded material (I've posted specific books before).

Read all over the neck.

You'll know the fretboard in a few months and you'll also know how to read.

This is the best answer, just get Mel Bay book one. You can go through a system that works, instead of half inventing your own and giving up when you can't play a Gm+b9 in all 4 inversions on each of the string sets by week 3.

[Reg]

Yea... if knowing, the notes as well as how the Guitar is mechanically organized... is goal, learn to sight read.

Your going to eventually pick a movable or position system to be able to work within the 12 fret repeating organization. Movable or positions organization allows one to not need to look at fretboard and still know where your at on the fretboard as well as what notes your playing.

We're all different.... some systems work better than others, but they all get there... the end goal.
Knowing what your playing.... and being able to play what you hear or mentally want to play.

Personally it really helped to approach... with practice technique and performance technique. They're different. If you don't work that much or really don't want to.... you can skip the performance part.

[TheGrandWazoo]

I like how Gene Bertoncini explains his practical way of learning the notes on the fretboard.

[pauln]

Play the six string A chord as 542225 and notice the roots,
they're on strings 631... let us call the root orientation 631.

Play the six string A chord as 577655 and notice the roots,
they're on strings 641... let us call the root orientation 641.

If you continue this process over the whole finger board you
will get a series of these orientations that identity the roots:

631
641
42
52
53
631
641...

Roots that are the ceilings of a position with respect to each
orientation become the floors of the next higher orientation:

631
641
42
52
53
631
641...

This is a two-way process where both views work together to
reinforce knowing all the local roots of any scales and chords:
- the placement of the roots uniquely identifies the orientation
- the orientation uniquely identifies the placement of the roots

You still have to know how to play scales and chords;
this is just a way to "keep your bearings" with respect
to what you are playing, especially fast changing stuff.

[wolflen]

there are many methods to learn anything...the ONE thing required--determination

I find it helps to have a reason to learn something for it to "stick"

take the basic triad..C major..learn its inversions in all positions on all string sets

do that with all the chords in the scale and then in different keys

learn the major scales (and minor) in different positions and find the triads in those positions

really learning the fret board is a basic but self rewarding task you will thank yourself many times as it opens many musical doors

[AllanAllen]

Play the six string A chord as 542225 and notice the roots,
they're on strings 631... let us call the root orientation 631.

Play the six string A chord as 577655 and notice the roots,
they're on strings 641... let us call the root orientation 641.

If you continue this process over the whole finger board you
will get a series of these orientations that identity the roots:

631
641
42
52
53
631
641...

Roots that are the ceilings of a position with respect to each
orientation become the floors of the next higher orientation:

631
641
42
52
53
631
641...

This is a two-way process where both views work together to
reinforce knowing all the local roots of any scales and chords:
- the placement of the roots uniquely identifies the orientation
- the orientation uniquely identifies the placement of the roots

You still have to know how to play scales and chords;
this is just a way to "keep your bearings" with respect
to what you are playing, especially fast changing stuff.

This looks like CAGED with a different name, 631 is G and 641 is E.... It's easier if you don't invent things that are already invented.

[pauln]

This looks like CAGED with a different name, 631 is G and 641 is E.... It's easier if you don't invent things that are already invented.

The finger board is already long invented and all systems of understanding the finger board that avoid confounding intent with execution (like thinking of what to play, then transposing,re-fingering, and renaming stuff to actually play it) are isomorphic, so also "already invented", the only variations being which objects, morphisms (mappings), and compositions are used (string/fret, note and chord names, open string intervals, fingerings, positions, octaves, etc). Octaves are the simplest (good for getting started) and providing the most boost (because everything you already know can be connected to them instantly).

CAGED is not isomorphic with the finger board. It is a system of what to think that does not match what you musically want to play. It confounds thinking of each of the letter names of five major cowboy chords which you do not want to play, in order to form something transposed ,re-fingered, and renamed into what you do want to play (and does not include the other chord types you want to play). That is a few times removed from a direct path of what is thought about to what is played.