JamPlayGuitar.com

It's only 126 notes. How bad can it be?

Why it's important to know where your notes are.

I remember how daunting the task of learning all of the notes on my fretboard seemed when I first picked up the guitar. I was already well versed in music theory and knew how to read music from playing sax for nearly three years. Nonetheless, it still seemed like an overwhelming challenge that would take a lifetime for me to complete.

I actually remember saying to myself, "If I think this is hard, what about the poor dude who doesn't know how to read music?" As a result of this negative thinking, I put off learning my notes and traded it in for tab.

Unfortunately, it was something that soon came back to haunt me and I realized the importance of learning my fretboard. This story doesn't have to be you! Take your previous notion of the difficulty level and throw it out the door.

Let's look at this issue purely from a musical standpoint for those of you who are still skeptical. First, how on earth could learning more about music and your guitar hurt you? It will only increase your musical awareness and make you a better player. For example, look at your everyday band setting. You deal with many different chords and scales no matter what style or setting you're in. Knowing your notes allows you to know the root note of any chord or scale, opening up an unlimited arsenal of tools at your fingertips.

Not being able to read music or know your notes is like painting a picture without any brushes. You may have the idea in your head but you can't express it in a way that everyone around you can understand. In the professional world of music, if you can't read it or write it... you can't play it. That falls back on knowing where those notes are. Reading music also becomes a snap to learn because you have half of the work already done!

On the note (no pun intended) of professionalism, if you think that you might like to teach music, join a band professionally, go into the recording industry, composing, producing, arranging, or anything of the like, knowing the notes on your neck is the equivalency of knowing how to write words on paper.

Hopefully I don't look like the bad guy here. I'm not saying that you can't be successful at music without knowing your notes on the neck. It's obvious that many great musicians who didn't know their notes still triumphed in the guitar world but think at how much better they could have been had they known them.

How you can achieve success (the background).

Now that we've covered the reasons why learning your fretboard would be a good idea, you're probably sitting there thinking, "Where's this amazing method that you said you had." The amazing method isn't great because of a secret trick that no one knows about, rather, because it actually uses common sense... something that you hopefully won't forget to use!

Think back to the days of elementary school when you were learning the basic concepts of math. One of the first things you would look for when learning how to multiply would be a pattern. That way, if you knew how to multiply one set of numbers, the next would come to you easier. Learning your fretboard takes this concept to a new level.

However, before we dive into these easy as pie concepts, we need to take a quick look at some basic theory. Relax, it's basically your alphabet and it will help you understand why the notes on your fretboard are placed where they are.

In music, there are only eight notes: A, B, C, D, E ,F , & G. The cycle then continues back to A after you hit that G. Every cycle you complete is called an octave. There are many different locations on the fretboard where these octaves can be achieved (more in a minute.)

Most of these notes have sharps and flats which raise or lower the pitch, adding different sounds onto those natural notes. Here is the line up of notes with both sharps and flats:

Ab, A, A#, Bb, B, C, C#, Db, D, D#, Eb, E, F, F#, Gb, G, & G#

Now before you freak out, most of the above does the memorizing for you. Take a look at the notes below:

Ab, A, A#, Bb, B, C, C#, Db, D, D#, Eb, E, F, F#, Gb, G, G# bbbbbbb^bbbbbbbbb^bbbbbbb^bbbbbbbbb^bbbbbbbb^

...That arrow pointing between certain notes is signifying which ones sound the same. On your fretboard, these notes will both appear on one fret! For example, on the fourth fret of your low E string, you could be playing a G#, or an Ab... Depending on what the music (i.e. key signature) called for. They both sound the same, just under two names. Look at them as identical twins. These notes aren't some kind of weird phenomenon either, rather, they are known as "Enharmonics."

Circled below in bubbles are all the enharmonics on your fretboard:

...Imagine how long your fretboard would have to be if all of those notes sounded different! Music works in a very tight package, not unlike a puzzle.

So let's take a moment to recap. We have our seven notes ranging from A to G. An octave is when we cycle through those seven notes and land back on our A (which gives us eight notes total.) Our fretboard has numerous places where two different notes will appear on one fret which produces the same sound for both notes. These are called enharmonics.

Going back to octaves for a minute, here is a quick chart illustrating the locations of the octaves that can be found on your low E string in conjunction with your D string.

Note: They are color coated, the same color represents that they are an octave.

...You can take octaves up in pitch, or down in pitch... whichever you prefer. You will be playing the exact same riff but it will either sound higher or lower. Remember that for every note on your fretboard there is an octave to match it, although some can be hard to reach with your hands.

Now that we have the essentials in the back of our heads, it's time to get down to business and show you the quickest and most effective way to learn every note on your guitar's neck.

Shapes.

Remember that brief mention of math? Here's where it comes in. Whether we choose to accept it or not, music is practically math with the exception of the pleasing sounds. The notes are arranged on your fingerboard in such a way that numerous patterns can be found.

However, there's one quick catch. The only place on your fretboard where you must memorize the notes is on your low E string. The good news is that if you memorize your low E string, you have just memorized your high E string as well... Good for you! You're already a step ahead of the game.

If you get lost, have no fear. Remember that your first note is your open E. When you press the first fret of your low E string, an F will be sounded. The next fret up will be F#/Gb, an enharmonic. Then it moves to A and you just keep on counting. Here is an illustration:

The 12th fret is your open tuning of E, A, D, G, B, E all over again and the pattern repeats, the only difference being that it's one octave higher.

With your low E string taken care of, it's time to look for some patterns. Take a look at your previous octave chart. Notice how easy that many of them are to place two fingers on?

Here's some fingerings that show us a new pattern to discover all of the notes on our D string by using our low E string:

...Use your first finger on the low E string and your third on your D string. What do you hear when you play the above?

The same note! Whoohoo, we just solved yet another piece of the puzzle. Using our low E string and making an octave using the D string, we find the same notes as on the D string. When we're playing an F on the first fret of our E string, it turns out to be on the third fret of our D string!

Using this new shape, we can apply the knowledge that we already know to the D string and learn all of the notes on that string.

Now that we know our low and High E string along with our D string, we can use that knowledge to find out the notes on the rest of our strings. Here is a brand new shape to help us achieve that:

Use your index finger and your pinkie to achieve this shape. It may take a little getting used to but the purpose isn't for sound, it's so you can see the different notes. The reason why we had to start from our low E string to find the notes for that G string is because we don't know where everything is on our A string yet. That's why we needed to take a new approach.

Now that we can locate all of the notes on our G string from our high E string, we can use the G string to find out the notes on our A string using the first shape that we talked about. Here's what it looks like:

Notice how our G string allows us to see all of the notes for the A string? Now we know how to get the note locations for all of our strings with the exception of B. Here's how you can find B using your D string:

The fingering requires your index and pinkie finger. Now we know the shapes that we can use to find every note on our fretboard!

The next step is to take ten or fifteen minutes out of your day for around two weeks and run through all of the notes, saying them out loud. Sounds kind of funny but it works. A famous saying in the music world is, "Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent." The same applies to this lesson.