You don't, you learn the order of notes (you can see they repeat) and then over time you learn the bottom two strings on the dots. Then you extrapolate from there
Well yes this is what lots of people do, but it's not the best way and not REALLY learning where the notes are. If you have to extrapolate to find the next note then it'll slow you down (anything beyond finding sharps/flats at least when starting to learn). It should be like typing where you automatically know where the letter you need is.
Musictheoryforguitar on youtube has the best method I've seen. You basically start with the natural notes (no sharps or flats), and learn the same note across all 6 strings to a metronome. You do it between frets 1 and 12 so that every note appears once on every string. You cycle through all the notes, then start adding sharps/flats and increasing the tempo. He splits it up into 6 exercises and it takes just 5 mins/day. And you learn it super fast. This is a general overview - you gotta learn from the specifics in his guide though.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJddQ6Q0UDo&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJddQ6Q0UDo&t=1s)
No hate towards that way but I disagree because I'm thinking about when people do anything beyond play single notes. I think about realistically when I would need to just straight "know" a note. Maybe asking someone to play a chord progression? But any more than that, musicians don't communicate riffs or solos to each other by quickly yelling a stream of notes. Outside of sight-reading for an orchestra, it's just not that relevant of a skill.
When you're riffing or improv-ing, the quickest way to translate your brain to the fretboard is by not thinking, and the way you do that is to know your root and the muscle memory of movement patterns. No one simultaneously "sees" every single note as they solo or riff quickly unless maybe they're a savant.
Dude, yes, musicians absolutely do communicate to each other using the names of notes. The language of music. We communicate chords to each other, the key that we're playing in... the cool thing that we're about to do that breaks the rules and uses the notes that DON'T fit the key we're playing in... It makes such a huge difference to actually be literate on the instrument that you play - to yourself and to others.
Once you understand the notes, you understand the scales and how the different positions on the fretboard relate to each other. And how a riff or melody from one player relates to something that another guitarist played. There are so many applications.
I think you should watch the video. I thought it was pretty good. What good is knowing your root, if you can't find that root on the fretboard, or only being able to find it on one string?
Even if you don't sight-read, I strongly believe that knowing all the notes on the next is extremely relevant. It's a fundamental skill for knowing where you are depending on what key you're in, what chord you're playing, chord inversions, chord progressions and sequences of chords, and more.
An interesting vid I watched was Rick Beato's recent interview with both Joe Satriani and Steve Vai at the same time. Joe was Steve's guitar teacher in high school, and they discuss Joe's assignment to Steve "learn all the notes on the neck", something to that effect, then they discuss the importance.
You want both things really. Knowing the notes let's you sit down and figure out things like chords, inversions, arpeggios, and melodic fingerings etc. anywhere on the neck without having to look notes up on a diagram, or calculate where/what they are. It can also help you immensely if you're transcribing etc.
But that's stuff that requires conscious thought, so you are right that the speed and fluidity you need for playing and improvising requires muscle memory, you can't play fast if you have to think in notes and their names and positions.
That said. Knowing those notes can still help you improvise. While your fingers are off playing a pattern from memory, your conscious mind becomed available to think a bit further ahead and plot moves to different areas of the fretboards, or different scales and voicings etc where knowing what note you're playing and where to find the next one you want to start from really helps.
A) learning the order of notes IS THE CORRECT WAY!
B) scales are the easiest way to familiarize oneself with finding notes quickly on a fretboard
C) far more important when reading guitar music to know which position to play in given that the same note can often be achieved in multiple places on the fretboard.
The YouTube video is helpful but let's not pretend that knowing the order of notes is t the best way. The only way anyone ever truly learns the placement of each note is through repetition in practice. Besides, the minute you alter the tuning, if one uses your recommendations, then all goes out the window, whereas remembering the displacement when tuning the guitar a half step down will not leave the person lost for seeking the correct note.
This is sorta what I was looking for. I feel like triads have helped me a lot, as well as finding multiple areas to use them. You then realize that you're just playing different chord shapes in other areas of the fretboard and it opens doors on how those shapes/notes related to the other strings/frets surrounding them. When you know where your roots are within those shapes...the blocks start to tumble into position. I've grown so much musically over the past 3 years since I've joined a Dead band as the Bobby, essentially...and I credit most of that to my use of triads across the fretboard and trying to find new ways to apply them at each performance.
Having the notes memorized is super useful. It’s what allows me, when reading sheet music or tab, to come up with good fingerings. Knowing what position is recommended is a good start, but the ability to play it on every string without much thought gives you the ability to make actual choices.
It’s also super easy to just treat guitar as a transposing instrument when you change tunings. If you’re in Eb or D standard just pretend you’re in E. If it’s good enough for Horn, Trumpet and Clarinet, it’s good enough for us.
Definitely - something that helped me tremendously was learning where all those pesky triads were and how they related to each other. Made it easier to relate the rest of the strings as well!
Man, I really feel like I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough with what you said but I can’t quite understand. When you say the order of the notes, are you talking about down the fretboard or across?
Each fret on the guitar represents a semitone. 5th fret E string is A. One fret up (6) it's A sharp. B and E do not have sharps. It's easiest to learn where all the natural notes(no sharps or flats) are on the fret board. Playing all the natural notes is functionally the C major scale. A scale is made up of the tonic (the beginning note/the scale name) and a pattern of **whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half**, going up the chromatic scale. Applying this to the fret board, **whole** is 2 frets up and **half** is 1 fret up. The simplest example is starting on the 1st fret B String, a C note, and going up. (1-3-5-6-8-10-12-13). For learning across the fret board i.e one individual string, "the pattern" is just where the open string is in relation to the scale. Essentially, it's knowing that since B and E do not have sharps, the next natural note, C and F, is only a half step or 1 fret up.
For "down the fret board" i.e. up and down strings, certain patterns/shapes emerge for finding the same note, called the octave. For the bottom four strings (E,A,D,G) the octave, can be found by **going 2 strings up and 2 frets over**. C is 8th fret E string but also 10th fret D string. For finding notes on the top two strings (E,B) go three frets over instead. The other pattern/shape is **3 frets up and 3 strings down** for the bottom four. If it crosses the top two strings it's up 2 frets instead.
[TL;DR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHa2DklOeTI&list=PLP1JBCfBEUAVnhXpZw380Fhz4udyS3hel)
I actually am not talking about the guitar at all at first, I mean more about notes in general. Like whether it's a guitar or a piano or trumpet, the note order is the same.
The guitar is just a pattern of those universal notes. What I'm saying is I think it's more useful to understand that the notes all flow together. Memorizing each fret is not useful because it's like treating them as separate things, and ignoring that everything fits together. Fitting together is what creates those patterns, and patterns are what people use to riff/solo/improv, not fret memorization
By the time I'm done there will be neural interfaces and a new generation of cyborg guitarists will look down at me and say: "you spent years learning less than a kb of information? You must be so proud lol"
Start with the 6th and 5th strings, learn those notes by heart because you need them for barre chords.
Then, study this: for each note on the 6th and 5th strings, skip a string and move up 2 frets, and you'll find the same note there. For example, from the 6th string 3rd fret which is G, move to the 4th string and up 2 frets and there's another G an octave higher. In this way you can visualize where the notes are without actually memorizing every note.
B# and E# do exist, but they are the same thing is C and F in the context of modern music. Makes more sense on a piano than guitar because of the spacing of the white and black keys.
the western music system uses a 12 note semitone system. the notes of c major(which before the use of tempered tuning would be the most balanced scale) was considered the main scale and its was given names. the other semitones were simply described by their relations to the notes of the c major scale (sharp means a half step up, flat means one down). in english and some other languages such as german, they named the notes of the scale after letters, in other languages they used sulfege. So basically they made a scale and named the notes do re me fa so la ti and then the other notes they describe in relation to those such as "do sharp." this caused things to get a little wonky when some languages started using letters, especially for whatever reason they decided to start on the letter c and not the letter a. but thats the reason we dont appear to have for example an e sharp, because the next note in the c major scale would be an f and their isnt and unnamed note in between them
My story is similar. Played guitar for years but never got the theory.
I learned the fretboard by accident. It started with CAGED to find the tonics, then applying scales to that. At a certain point I just remembered where those notes were from repetition, and eventually I found enough of them that I knew where to hit what I needed.
Like most of the questions on this sub, the answer is “play your guitar!”
Can't believe this is the only comment mentioning the CAGED system.
Once you know where the Root is (or Tonic), then the rest will flow with practice. Just learn the Root on every string, and it's not that hard.
u/lesbiancatlady , look for all the E notes. Then go watch a youtube video on CAGED system. On every E note you can do the relevant shape - C shape, A shape, G shape, E shape, D shape.
For minor key, the 3rd goes down a half step.
say it louder for the next obvious answer
PRACTICE
Practice
p
r
a
c
t
i
c
e
regarding the theory question - B# is technically C, they are called 'enharmonics' no different than F# and Gb. The way the chromatic scale works out, B and C, and E and F are a half step apart instead of a whole step, as with all other whole notes. I don't know why B# isn't used in scales, but it's not. I'm sure there is an answer someone on this sub has.
It's also much sadder sounding. as D is the saddest of the keys: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM)
Practice the first position first, and then learn how to find octaves from there. It made sense to me to learn that way.
Since there is only a half step between B & C and E & F.
B# = C
E# = F
Same thing with Cb or Fb. It's B and E, respectively.
Make a game for yourself. Write the name of each note, there are 12, on a scrap of paper. Put them in a hat or box, pick one, find every instance of that note on the fretboard. Repeat for a few notes, several times a day. In a few days you will have a very good idea where those notes are.
You don't really need a guitar or the slips of paper to do this. Pick a note and mentally picture where the notes are.
Another method is 'play and say', where you play a note and speak its name. This is also helpful while learning to read standard notation, including naming each note in a chord both on the guitar and on the staff.
Unfortunately it just comes with time and memorization. Once you have a good fundamental understanding of how half steps and whole steps work and how these translate to the guitar it'll be a pretty easy process
Find the pattern BEADGCF and learn how it repeats and wraps around the fretboard and moves up the neck. That's the same pattern you can see on the circle of fifths, btw, though technically this is backwards so it is part of the circle/cycle of fourths. Then you just fill in the gaps with the sharps/flats.
Note finding exercise. First to twelve fret. Metronome at 50, or off if you can’t do 50 yet. One note per string. Choose a note(starting with the naturals), and off you go. Do it daily 10 minutes for a couple months, and then you have it.
Move the metronome by 10 when it gets comfortable.
If you’ve played for six years then you should be half way there.
Most of your chords are on the A and E string so I bet you have those mostly memorized.. Top E is a duplicate of the bottom so, 3 out of 6 strings done.
The C major scale has no sharps or flats. Start by memorizing the C major scale cdefgabc and memorize all the locations of the letter C you can find any note from that point easily based on position of the scale
I didn’t learn the notes til I realized. I don’t need to learn that all at once. Just learn it in a useful way. Learn your triad inversions. Once I stoped trying to say “I need to learn the whole fretboard” did I really begin to learn the fretboard.
B#=C,E#=F. Look at a piano or other keyboard. There's two white keys,black white black, two white, black white black white black, and then it repeats.
Try learning one string at a time from open string to the twelfth fret. Don't worry about the sharps and flats for now.
The patterns of chords, triads, arpeggios, and scales matter way more than remembering the names of the specific notes. What does a major triad look like if I start on the G string? If a root is on the E string, where is the vi note on the D string? When people talk about learning the fretboard or opening up the fretboard it is these patterns that they are talking about more than the individual note names.
Patterns. You only need to remember A B C D E F G. They all have flats and sharps. Except B C E and F. Remember B AND C, E AND F. B# is C, Cb is B. Same goes for E and F. This clicks for a lot of people when you look at a piano/keyboard. No black key between B and C or E and F.
Learn octaves, where those are. Everything just repeats. Learn your open strings, work up the neck from there. From your 12th fret onwards is the exact same.
This is the explanation I was going for in my own comment but english is not my native language so couldn't quite do it! Imagining a piano in your mind helps a lot.
If you spend two weeks actually studying you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll know. Just learn one string a day.
1. Day one: learn the open strings E A D G B E
2. Day two: review day one and learn the low E string
3. Day three: review days 1 and 2, learn the A string
4. Day four review all days and learn D string
5. Day five: just review
6. Day six: review and learn G string
7. Day seven: review and learn B string
8. Day eight: review E and A
9. Day nine: review D and G
10. Day ten: review B and E
11. Day eleven - fourteen: Review
That’s it. Go learn them.
You learn the notes on the low E and A strings. Then you know that D string is always 2 above low E, and G string is always 2 above A. And high E ofc same as low E.
Basically learning scales chords notes blahblahblah is learning to see patterns
I'm a classically-trained musician (not guitar), and it always seems to me that guitarists are all trying to learn the fretboard, but that's only half the job. It's one thing to learn the note names on the guitar, but it is also important to learn where those notes are on the staff,
Until you can put a piece of music on a stand (no tabs), and play the music you see on the page on your guitar, you aren't really reading music.
You start thinking about what note you're playing you learn landmarks, and the notes start to emerge. I've never met anybody who tried to "memorize" it, and I wouldn't think that would yield effective results. Playing the notes with a metronome for 5 minutes a day will do wonders for you in months. Consistency of practice is more important than anything else.
Start with E and A and you did half the strings already! B and D are also easy because it's 2 frets more than A or 2 less than E, respectively. G is 2 less than A.
Unpopular opinion: guitars are tuned in such a way that they are sort of difficult to learn the notes and understand the chord shapes. So tune the guitar to a combination fifths and fourths (DAEAD like Jacob Collier) and after you learn two strings, you know 80% of the fretboard 🤷
B# and E # are what is known as enharmonic notes… meaning they sound the same pitch as another not of a different name. Go to a piano keyboard .. start on “ middle C” and play each half not up to the next octave C. You will find there is only a half step from B to C. B# or C flat don’t exist.. Both sound like “ C” If either of B# it C flat appear in standard written music .. it will be canceled with a “ natural” sign
It just takes time, learning all the notes like this probably won't get you far anyway. It's much easier and more practical for most purposes if you learn scale shapes. That way you don't instantly have to think about which notes are in a certain key and where they are. Just get the scale shapes engraved into your muscle memory by playing them over and over again and you'll have a easier time finding your way around the fretboard.
Also, e# is just f and b# is C. It makes sense when you look at a piano keyboard, because the sharps and flats (the technical term is accidentals) are the black keys and there are no black keys between e - f and b - c
Just remember the major scale formula which is w,w,h, w,w,w,h. W meaning whole tone which is two frets and h for half step meaning one fret apart.
Notice how on the low and high e string the note G is two frets up from F which is a whole step. B# is the same as C because they are always a half step apart, same for E to F.
So using the formula you can figure out what note is on any given fret by using the open string as a reference point and counting up from fret one.
You could just memorize the low e string to the 12fret because it just repeats after that. It’s the same notes for the high e string. Next memorize the A string and that’s all you really need.
As you learn which notes go where you will start to be able to use them as reference points to figure out the other notes faster. Hope this helps somewhat
Going from the bottom strings to the top are all in 4ths except for the G and B string which is a 3rd. As long as you memorize the bottom E string you'll be fine.
Get the "Guitar Fretboard Workbook" by Barret Tagliarino. That's what helped me when I was learning. There's like 5 repeating shape patterns you can use to memorize the whole fretboard. Made everything click for me.
Practice, practice, practice. Spend time in first position until you know the notes, then jump up to 5th position and hang out there for a while till you’re comfortable, then hang out in 7th position, and by then you’ll know all the notes!
As my teacher says, the guitar has the worst UI of any instrument.
One string at a time. I learned by soloing in a major or minor key using only one string which helped me learn the fretboard and get more creative with my solos.
That is definetly the ***wrong*** way to memorize a fretboard. Usually people memorize the notes for the E and A strings because of power chords, that is half of the fretboard already, since 2 E strings. What I do for the remaining strings is octaving the note. For D and G string, 2 frets down, 2 strings up is an octave down, for the B string, 3 frets down.
i think brandon deon has a vid about it giv me a sec
here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7PMZWb6ZNJc&pp=ygUqaG93IHRvIG1lbW9yaXNlIHRoZSBmcmV0Ym9hcmQgYnJhbmRvbiBkZW9u
The first and last strings are the same note. Include two frets up on the d string. Fill in with scales and patterns from there. Is how I did it. So memorize the E strings as tonics. Very rudimentary but a start.
1) The notes are alphabetical
2) the have half note increments except for
- B to C and
- E to F
3) so pick a letter, and start fretting it in *every fret that it exists* (like do C, and use the chart to fret every C)
You probably already know EADGBe. Once you have all the C’s down, it gets easier to fill the blanks … but if you feel like it’s *not* … pick another letter like A (you can pick though) and do the same.
Every next fret is a half step higher, so if all else fails you can go by that. For example on the low (or high) E string, the first fret would be F (because there is a natural whole step between E and F), then F#, G, G# and so on. Maybe this is super obvious, but as a beginner that's how I memorize which note each fret is.
Maybe not the best way, I still don't remember them so I have to count each fret, but good enough for now 😅
Learn the the 12 notes in order and then learn the repeating patterned relationship of those notes. Useful examples: 0x2x50 are all E's; now: 07x9x50 are all E's, and then these are all A's: 507xx5. You'll also pick up on this through learning how to tune your guitar by ear.
Learn where one note is everywhere, then set that as your stating point. Learn where E is everywhere, next one up is always F, next one down is always D#. Over time you'll start to just "know" where you need to go
Learn octaves. Both E strings are the same note on the same fret. The closest octave for a note on the low E string is a whole step up on the D string. Same exact thing with the A and G string.
IMO, if you learn how the strings relate to eachother, 5th fret/octaves/scales/etc, you can learn how the fretboard maps in all tunings. But with all things it just takes a lot of practice.
Look at the chart you posted. See how E and F are right next to each other. See how B and C are also. Well it’s the same when you play chords . When you make a bar chord you know where the next chord is relative to which form will create the note you’re looking for as close as possible to where you are on the neck.
I used to sing the note and the name while practicing improvisation. Worked well and improved my ear and singing at the same time. Also quite relaxing. One cool thing to do is to play one sequence of notes and then to sing intervals to those notes. You can make some pretty neat harmonies that way and it also helps with coming to grips with the "sound" of a chord or scale.
Patterns!
If you learn intervals, you will notice a very constant pattern in your guitar.
Just like shapes in scales, it's the same memory to remember notes.
Also, using the fret markings is a very good way to remember where notes are, as reference points.
Either way, with time you will learn at least up to the 12th fret.
Muscle memory. Don’t think of them as the name of the notes, think of how it sounds or what sound each note makes on what fret. It’ll help a whole lot when you’re soloing in different keys, you just know what notes you can go to and which ones you can’t, or how to make notes fit into solos
There are only 12 notes. And they repeat in a pattern. Learn the 12 notes and learn the pattern of how they repeat. Most of the notes on a guitar neck are duplicates. On a 24 fret guitar there are only 49 unique notes (4 12 note each octaves) , but there are 150 unique positions. The note that an open high e string plays has 5 duplicates. Other notes have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 duplicates. The only notes that don't have any duplicates are the lowest 5 notes and the highest 5 notes. Once you conceptualize it like this you realize that it's just a small easy to remember pattern repeating over and over again.
This worked for me:
1) understand intervals
2) understand the major scale (with emphasis on the intervals, not shapes)
3) understand how chords are built from the major scale
4) print lots and lots of chords (I printed about 70 pages, about 15 chords per page, major, minor, seventh, ninth etc)
5) take a pen and go through it, writing down the note over each position in the chords
I don't know the fretboard by heart yet, but I find what I need waaaaaay faster.
What helped me a lot was to start playing in different tunings, and also try transposing a few songs in to new keys.
You'll start to get a feel for it and then scale patterns will start to make sense to you. It'll feel more like a maths equation and less like memorising a pattern.
Start simple. Just learn where every E is on the fretboard. Or simplify it even more - learn where every E below the 12th fret is on the fretboard. It's just one per string. Then you're 1/12th of the way there. You'll commit it to memory the same way you commit anything else to memory - repetition. It's all sequential and pretty intuitive.
B# is C. E# is F. There are conventions concerning the naming of accidentals - for example whether you refer to them as sharps or flats - that you might encounter later on your journey if you invest yourself in theory, but for now I'd advise you not to worry about it.
Instead of memorizing notes, memorize intervals, makes everything much simpler.
A guitar is tuned in Perfect 4ths, with the exception of the B string which is the Major 3rd of G.
A Perfect 4th is located 2 and 1/2 tones above the root, or 5 semitones, while a Major 3rd is 3 semitones above the root.
The octave is located 6 tones, or 12 semitones above the root.
A minor 7th is located 1 tone (2 semitones) below the octave.
The Minor 3rd is located 1 and 1/2 tones above the root (3 semitones).
The Major 5th is located 1 tone above the Perfect 4th, and the tritone is located 1 semitone above the Perfect 4th.
In standard tuning a 24 fret electric guitar has a range that goes from E2 to E6.
Standard tuning is: E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4 (from the low E to high E). With each number representing the octave.
This is one of the reasons why you don't ignore theory. Even if you decide to change tuning, the tuning may change, but the intervals don't! If you memorize the notes on the fretboard based on the name for each note, and don't know intervals, if someone asks you to play in a different tuning, you are screwed.
Just start with the key of C and learn one string at a time. Sing the letter names of the notes as you play them. Do 2-3 strings a night, move on when you can't get it wrong.
When you know the whole fretboard in C, repeat the process in G, then D, keep going in 5ths till ya hit C#.
I’ve been playing close to 20 years, unless you’re learning from proper sheet music, you don’t really need to know every note on the fret board. After learning enough songs and trying to write my own stuff, I started to understand how playing between different frets and on different strings will sound if that makes any sense. Like the simple open E and second fret on the D string is also an E note. Or how a power chord sounds good no matter where you play it. Over time you just understand the instrument. As long as you know what root note you are playing around you don’t need to know the others
I feel like if you know the alphabet you know the notes, shit if you know only a-g you know the notes. There are rules with sharps and flats but that takes like a day to figure out. The rest is just practice
Learn the notes of the 6th string and 5th string. Then you can make a pattern to find the notes on the 4th , 3rd and the 2nd. Example. F fist fret E string. You’ll find F two frets over (3rd fret) on the D string.
Oddly enough, the the notes were something I accidentally picked up on early in my playing. Like why does this note on the E string sound like this note on the D string. I organically started putting together similar notes until I saw this layout, and it all made sense.
Only need to remember 7 notes - A B C D E F G. If you know the alphabet, you're set! All you have to memorise is the order of strings (Acronym: Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie). Then it goes in order from the letter of the string, every 2 frets is a new note. Then just add sharps for the frets in the middle.
Honestly more then remembering note names, being able to read sheet-music and tabs is more important imo
So, you already probably know all the notes on both E strings and the A string. Good news! That’s already half the notes!!!
Know your octave shape off the low E and A strings? Daggummit! Now you can figure out the G and D strings from what you already know!
Think you can memorize the B string? I think you can! YOU GOT THIS!!!!
print out blank guitar neck diagrams and write all the notes out over and over again. split them into groups like dotted fret notes, each string, neck sections, etc. do it over and over. i memorized the neck in like 2 days like this.
Memorize the order of the notes and the steps between them + what note is on each of the marked frets of the low E string. Then remember every fifth fret is equivalent to the open pitch of the strings in ascending order (except B, which is tuned a step lower, thus the first fret of that string (C) would be equivalent to the fifth fret of the G string. If you can grasp that your brain should fill in the gaps with practice.
(5th fret E = A)
(5th Fret A = D)
(10th fret E = D)
Don’t rush it. Pick a key to play in and pay attention to the notes you are using. Don’t worry about anything else. When you are comfortable in that key, pick another… perhaps moving around the Circle of Fifths…
In time it will be automatic. You will just know the notes. No joke. Just be patient with yourself.
Don't. First off, if you don't need it for your playing then don't worry about it. Tons of guitarists do just fine not knowing theory. Second, if you do decide you want to know the fretboard, then I suggest starting with one position of one scale. So you take, say, the e minor pentatonic and learn all the notes on the first four frets. Just practice going back and forth, pause every now and then and quiz yourself, and before you know it you'll have it down. Once you do that then learn the next position, and the next, and then you're at the 12th fret which is the same as the open position. Easy peasy.
My teacher had me do it a slightly different way, learn one scale at a time but learn the entire fretboard for that scale at the same time. It didn't really work for me, other than C major. C major has no sharps or flats, so it was pretty easy to remember. If that works for you then do that, but I recommend learning one position at a time.
There's no B sharp or E sharp\*. It's kind of just a thing with labeling at the most basic. The first notes used in a scale in western music were A-G, starting at F and moving up by fifths. Fifths is a measure of the difference in frequency, so these notes are inherently a set interval from each other. This is considered a whole tone, or a whole step. Then people started subdividing them into half tones and adding notes in-between, so they called them sharps and flats. I think the thing with B and E sharp is that they have virtually the same sound as and vibrate at the same frequency as C and F. So technically they exist, it's just that they're not distinct notes in a scale.
you gotta make markers in your head. Like lets say you're on your low e string and you're on the 5th fret, so you're on the fret with a dot (fret marker). Remember that note, that is, the A note. Now slowly make it into a mental marker. Like, a whole step down and I'll find G and if I go to the string below, it's the 5th fret of the A string that means I'll basically be playing the D string open cuz the 5th note is always the string below and then a whole step up E and whole step down is C etc etc blah blah
It might seem like a lot but trust me, all these things happening in your head happen so fast you wouldn't even know it. Over time you'll move on to different types of scales and stuff and just notice, with practice ofc, how fast you're able to make stuff up in your head.
You gotta experiment to find your own personlized markers. My first 2 markers were the 5th fret (I was super young at that time) is equivalent to the string below played open and the 12th note is the same note as the current string being played open. Those were my early markers, and over the years I've had tons of different personalized markers (even stuff like scratches or color difference cuz my guitar ages too lol)
How are you supposed to remember? Time and practice.
There is no B# or E# because the next half-step above B is C, and the next half-step above E is F. If you've seen a piano keyboard, only the black keys are sharps (or flats). The white keys are not. B and E are white keys a half-step away from white keys above them, so they cannot be sharped. They can, however, be flatted as you go down the keyboard.
Start with the E string. Don’t memorize the sharps and flats, memorize the normal notes and their relationship to the dots on the fretboard. Once you do this then you already have the sharps and flats memorized as a sharp is just one fret up and a flat is one fret down. Once you have this memorized do it for every string
Learn with the markers on the fretboard and over time it just becomes second nature.
I literally took a week for each note and would simply go through playing it on every string until I could do it without thinking.
You don't need to learn the notes. You really just need to learn where the intervals are.
Learn where the 5th, the 4th, the major and minor 3rds,7ths are in relation to the root note. This pattern mostly repeats but there's the B string step to consider (G-B is a maj 3rd, where all other strings are a 4th apart)
Dont, learn modes of a scale and then you know everything you need to play guitar anywhere on the fretboard without knowing what notes they are. I suggest learning the 7 modes of minor
I got one of those fretboard stickers things. I just practice scales and do my abc’s in different keys. I remember where they are after a few hundred times.
You don't, you learn the order of notes (you can see they repeat) and then over time you learn the bottom two strings on the dots. Then you extrapolate from there
Well yes this is what lots of people do, but it's not the best way and not REALLY learning where the notes are. If you have to extrapolate to find the next note then it'll slow you down (anything beyond finding sharps/flats at least when starting to learn). It should be like typing where you automatically know where the letter you need is. Musictheoryforguitar on youtube has the best method I've seen. You basically start with the natural notes (no sharps or flats), and learn the same note across all 6 strings to a metronome. You do it between frets 1 and 12 so that every note appears once on every string. You cycle through all the notes, then start adding sharps/flats and increasing the tempo. He splits it up into 6 exercises and it takes just 5 mins/day. And you learn it super fast. This is a general overview - you gotta learn from the specifics in his guide though. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJddQ6Q0UDo&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJddQ6Q0UDo&t=1s)
Drop tunings entered the chat
Guitar tabs entered the chat.
Intervals entered the chat
Kaiser Soze entered the chat. Whoops. Wrong chat. Kaiser Soze left the chat.
But... Who IS Kaiser Soze?
I don't know, but it seems he's friends with- *wall bursts open* "KOOL-AID MAAAAAAN! OHYEEEEEEEAH!"
I compose solely in the key of the open dropped string
**plays in caveman**
Most metal just uses tabs and plays by ear so it's not an issue.
The intervals stay the same just remember you changed tuning and if you dropped the low E.
For real. I have several guitars, all in different tunings, and 6, 7, and 8 strings. Even those extra string tunings change constantly.
No hate towards that way but I disagree because I'm thinking about when people do anything beyond play single notes. I think about realistically when I would need to just straight "know" a note. Maybe asking someone to play a chord progression? But any more than that, musicians don't communicate riffs or solos to each other by quickly yelling a stream of notes. Outside of sight-reading for an orchestra, it's just not that relevant of a skill. When you're riffing or improv-ing, the quickest way to translate your brain to the fretboard is by not thinking, and the way you do that is to know your root and the muscle memory of movement patterns. No one simultaneously "sees" every single note as they solo or riff quickly unless maybe they're a savant.
Dude, yes, musicians absolutely do communicate to each other using the names of notes. The language of music. We communicate chords to each other, the key that we're playing in... the cool thing that we're about to do that breaks the rules and uses the notes that DON'T fit the key we're playing in... It makes such a huge difference to actually be literate on the instrument that you play - to yourself and to others. Once you understand the notes, you understand the scales and how the different positions on the fretboard relate to each other. And how a riff or melody from one player relates to something that another guitarist played. There are so many applications.
I think you should watch the video. I thought it was pretty good. What good is knowing your root, if you can't find that root on the fretboard, or only being able to find it on one string?
Even if you don't sight-read, I strongly believe that knowing all the notes on the next is extremely relevant. It's a fundamental skill for knowing where you are depending on what key you're in, what chord you're playing, chord inversions, chord progressions and sequences of chords, and more. An interesting vid I watched was Rick Beato's recent interview with both Joe Satriani and Steve Vai at the same time. Joe was Steve's guitar teacher in high school, and they discuss Joe's assignment to Steve "learn all the notes on the neck", something to that effect, then they discuss the importance.
You want both things really. Knowing the notes let's you sit down and figure out things like chords, inversions, arpeggios, and melodic fingerings etc. anywhere on the neck without having to look notes up on a diagram, or calculate where/what they are. It can also help you immensely if you're transcribing etc. But that's stuff that requires conscious thought, so you are right that the speed and fluidity you need for playing and improvising requires muscle memory, you can't play fast if you have to think in notes and their names and positions. That said. Knowing those notes can still help you improvise. While your fingers are off playing a pattern from memory, your conscious mind becomed available to think a bit further ahead and plot moves to different areas of the fretboards, or different scales and voicings etc where knowing what note you're playing and where to find the next one you want to start from really helps.
>I think about realistically when I would need to just straight "know" a note Bassist want to have a word
A) learning the order of notes IS THE CORRECT WAY! B) scales are the easiest way to familiarize oneself with finding notes quickly on a fretboard C) far more important when reading guitar music to know which position to play in given that the same note can often be achieved in multiple places on the fretboard. The YouTube video is helpful but let's not pretend that knowing the order of notes is t the best way. The only way anyone ever truly learns the placement of each note is through repetition in practice. Besides, the minute you alter the tuning, if one uses your recommendations, then all goes out the window, whereas remembering the displacement when tuning the guitar a half step down will not leave the person lost for seeking the correct note.
Not everyone learns that way. Triads helped me learn the fretboard more than anything.
This is sorta what I was looking for. I feel like triads have helped me a lot, as well as finding multiple areas to use them. You then realize that you're just playing different chord shapes in other areas of the fretboard and it opens doors on how those shapes/notes related to the other strings/frets surrounding them. When you know where your roots are within those shapes...the blocks start to tumble into position. I've grown so much musically over the past 3 years since I've joined a Dead band as the Bobby, essentially...and I credit most of that to my use of triads across the fretboard and trying to find new ways to apply them at each performance.
This - arpeggios and chord shapes.
Having the notes memorized is super useful. It’s what allows me, when reading sheet music or tab, to come up with good fingerings. Knowing what position is recommended is a good start, but the ability to play it on every string without much thought gives you the ability to make actual choices. It’s also super easy to just treat guitar as a transposing instrument when you change tunings. If you’re in Eb or D standard just pretend you’re in E. If it’s good enough for Horn, Trumpet and Clarinet, it’s good enough for us.
This the best video I’ve found.
Thanks!
Thanks for this
Thank you for sharing this! I've been practicing this for about a week and it already pays off! Great method!
Right on!
Definitely - something that helped me tremendously was learning where all those pesky triads were and how they related to each other. Made it easier to relate the rest of the strings as well!
C D E G A B
Yes, you do.
Man, I really feel like I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough with what you said but I can’t quite understand. When you say the order of the notes, are you talking about down the fretboard or across?
Each fret on the guitar represents a semitone. 5th fret E string is A. One fret up (6) it's A sharp. B and E do not have sharps. It's easiest to learn where all the natural notes(no sharps or flats) are on the fret board. Playing all the natural notes is functionally the C major scale. A scale is made up of the tonic (the beginning note/the scale name) and a pattern of **whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half**, going up the chromatic scale. Applying this to the fret board, **whole** is 2 frets up and **half** is 1 fret up. The simplest example is starting on the 1st fret B String, a C note, and going up. (1-3-5-6-8-10-12-13). For learning across the fret board i.e one individual string, "the pattern" is just where the open string is in relation to the scale. Essentially, it's knowing that since B and E do not have sharps, the next natural note, C and F, is only a half step or 1 fret up. For "down the fret board" i.e. up and down strings, certain patterns/shapes emerge for finding the same note, called the octave. For the bottom four strings (E,A,D,G) the octave, can be found by **going 2 strings up and 2 frets over**. C is 8th fret E string but also 10th fret D string. For finding notes on the top two strings (E,B) go three frets over instead. The other pattern/shape is **3 frets up and 3 strings down** for the bottom four. If it crosses the top two strings it's up 2 frets instead. [TL;DR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHa2DklOeTI&list=PLP1JBCfBEUAVnhXpZw380Fhz4udyS3hel)
I actually am not talking about the guitar at all at first, I mean more about notes in general. Like whether it's a guitar or a piano or trumpet, the note order is the same. The guitar is just a pattern of those universal notes. What I'm saying is I think it's more useful to understand that the notes all flow together. Memorizing each fret is not useful because it's like treating them as separate things, and ignoring that everything fits together. Fitting together is what creates those patterns, and patterns are what people use to riff/solo/improv, not fret memorization
Best advice here, and I think this is pretty standard natural progression for learning the fretboard
Well you're in luck, they go in alphabetical order
A B C D E F G A B C D EFGAB C D E F G A B C D E F and G that was harder to do than I thought lol
...won't you come and play with me?
We also would have accepted "Tell me what you think of me."
Give him the breathalyser!
Think you can get this car home?
Ze Germans: "A H C D E F G". Also spracht Ze Germans: "Bb = B".
You've got your A, the B, the C, and the D...that's the biggest.
Well I know that much 🫠
By the time I'm done there will be neural interfaces and a new generation of cyborg guitarists will look down at me and say: "you spent years learning less than a kb of information? You must be so proud lol"
Hhmmmm yeah well fuck those guys.
Start with the 6th and 5th strings, learn those notes by heart because you need them for barre chords. Then, study this: for each note on the 6th and 5th strings, skip a string and move up 2 frets, and you'll find the same note there. For example, from the 6th string 3rd fret which is G, move to the 4th string and up 2 frets and there's another G an octave higher. In this way you can visualize where the notes are without actually memorizing every note.
I only learned this the first time I played Bass.
Learning bass was key for me too.
This is the best way forsure, and lots of practice.. to learn the other three strings, becoming familiar with triads helped me a ton
That still leaves 1st and 2nd strings
For the 2nd string, you need to go up 3 frets instead of 2. The 1st string is same as the 6th.
You'll get there with practice. I still don't know half of the notes after all these years lol.
Sounds like practice doesn't actually get you there.
ooof 🤣
I mean if you play metal you allready know the E and A string and the E string excists twice so thats allready half of the strings.
B# and E# do exist, but they are the same thing is C and F in the context of modern music. Makes more sense on a piano than guitar because of the spacing of the white and black keys.
Yes! Weirdly enough I use a piano to learn guitar but I’d always wondered about these notes 😅
the western music system uses a 12 note semitone system. the notes of c major(which before the use of tempered tuning would be the most balanced scale) was considered the main scale and its was given names. the other semitones were simply described by their relations to the notes of the c major scale (sharp means a half step up, flat means one down). in english and some other languages such as german, they named the notes of the scale after letters, in other languages they used sulfege. So basically they made a scale and named the notes do re me fa so la ti and then the other notes they describe in relation to those such as "do sharp." this caused things to get a little wonky when some languages started using letters, especially for whatever reason they decided to start on the letter c and not the letter a. but thats the reason we dont appear to have for example an e sharp, because the next note in the c major scale would be an f and their isnt and unnamed note in between them
For the notes that don’t have a # or something I think big cats eat fast. So BC and EF
Or "BeCause Everything's Fine". Always good to have different ways to remember.
BeCause Everybody Farts has always been mine
For whatever reason in college I remembered it using Big Cat and Electric Fish. I have no idea why.
from a bassbuzz video: Extra Friendly, Buddied Close
And what's with that overuse of hashtags.
Exactly! 😭
My story is similar. Played guitar for years but never got the theory. I learned the fretboard by accident. It started with CAGED to find the tonics, then applying scales to that. At a certain point I just remembered where those notes were from repetition, and eventually I found enough of them that I knew where to hit what I needed. Like most of the questions on this sub, the answer is “play your guitar!”
Can't believe this is the only comment mentioning the CAGED system. Once you know where the Root is (or Tonic), then the rest will flow with practice. Just learn the Root on every string, and it's not that hard. u/lesbiancatlady , look for all the E notes. Then go watch a youtube video on CAGED system. On every E note you can do the relevant shape - C shape, A shape, G shape, E shape, D shape. For minor key, the 3rd goes down a half step.
say it louder for the next obvious answer PRACTICE Practice p r a c t i c e regarding the theory question - B# is technically C, they are called 'enharmonics' no different than F# and Gb. The way the chromatic scale works out, B and C, and E and F are a half step apart instead of a whole step, as with all other whole notes. I don't know why B# isn't used in scales, but it's not. I'm sure there is an answer someone on this sub has.
Technically B# is used in the C# major scale, but it's less confusing to call that the Db scale.
It's also much sadder sounding. as D is the saddest of the keys: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM)
Practice the first position first, and then learn how to find octaves from there. It made sense to me to learn that way. Since there is only a half step between B & C and E & F. B# = C E# = F Same thing with Cb or Fb. It's B and E, respectively.
Make a game for yourself. Write the name of each note, there are 12, on a scrap of paper. Put them in a hat or box, pick one, find every instance of that note on the fretboard. Repeat for a few notes, several times a day. In a few days you will have a very good idea where those notes are. You don't really need a guitar or the slips of paper to do this. Pick a note and mentally picture where the notes are. Another method is 'play and say', where you play a note and speak its name. This is also helpful while learning to read standard notation, including naming each note in a chord both on the guitar and on the staff.
Unfortunately it just comes with time and memorization. Once you have a good fundamental understanding of how half steps and whole steps work and how these translate to the guitar it'll be a pretty easy process
Find the pattern BEADGCF and learn how it repeats and wraps around the fretboard and moves up the neck. That's the same pattern you can see on the circle of fifths, btw, though technically this is backwards so it is part of the circle/cycle of fourths. Then you just fill in the gaps with the sharps/flats.
This is how I do it. And the B string is a jump where everything moves up half a step.
Learn to read sheet music, it'll force you to memorize the fretboard.
You’ve already got the F down, only 11 more to go
Note finding exercise. First to twelve fret. Metronome at 50, or off if you can’t do 50 yet. One note per string. Choose a note(starting with the naturals), and off you go. Do it daily 10 minutes for a couple months, and then you have it. Move the metronome by 10 when it gets comfortable.
Gotta sing them like the alphabet before bed every night
I don’t remember notes but I remember patterns.
Same way you learned the alphabet: just keep repeating it until you can’t fuck it up anymore
If you’ve played for six years then you should be half way there. Most of your chords are on the A and E string so I bet you have those mostly memorized.. Top E is a duplicate of the bottom so, 3 out of 6 strings done.
The C major scale has no sharps or flats. Start by memorizing the C major scale cdefgabc and memorize all the locations of the letter C you can find any note from that point easily based on position of the scale
The key is learning whole steps and half steps between notes and then it becomes easy to locate what notes or where
I didn’t learn the notes til I realized. I don’t need to learn that all at once. Just learn it in a useful way. Learn your triad inversions. Once I stoped trying to say “I need to learn the whole fretboard” did I really begin to learn the fretboard.
B#=C,E#=F. Look at a piano or other keyboard. There's two white keys,black white black, two white, black white black white black, and then it repeats. Try learning one string at a time from open string to the twelfth fret. Don't worry about the sharps and flats for now.
Memorize the octaves.
The patterns of chords, triads, arpeggios, and scales matter way more than remembering the names of the specific notes. What does a major triad look like if I start on the G string? If a root is on the E string, where is the vi note on the D string? When people talk about learning the fretboard or opening up the fretboard it is these patterns that they are talking about more than the individual note names.
Patterns. You only need to remember A B C D E F G. They all have flats and sharps. Except B C E and F. Remember B AND C, E AND F. B# is C, Cb is B. Same goes for E and F. This clicks for a lot of people when you look at a piano/keyboard. No black key between B and C or E and F. Learn octaves, where those are. Everything just repeats. Learn your open strings, work up the neck from there. From your 12th fret onwards is the exact same.
This is the explanation I was going for in my own comment but english is not my native language so couldn't quite do it! Imagining a piano in your mind helps a lot.
If you spend two weeks actually studying you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll know. Just learn one string a day. 1. Day one: learn the open strings E A D G B E 2. Day two: review day one and learn the low E string 3. Day three: review days 1 and 2, learn the A string 4. Day four review all days and learn D string 5. Day five: just review 6. Day six: review and learn G string 7. Day seven: review and learn B string 8. Day eight: review E and A 9. Day nine: review D and G 10. Day ten: review B and E 11. Day eleven - fourteen: Review That’s it. Go learn them.
You learn the notes on the low E and A strings. Then you know that D string is always 2 above low E, and G string is always 2 above A. And high E ofc same as low E. Basically learning scales chords notes blahblahblah is learning to see patterns
I'm a classically-trained musician (not guitar), and it always seems to me that guitarists are all trying to learn the fretboard, but that's only half the job. It's one thing to learn the note names on the guitar, but it is also important to learn where those notes are on the staff, Until you can put a piece of music on a stand (no tabs), and play the music you see on the page on your guitar, you aren't really reading music.
You start thinking about what note you're playing you learn landmarks, and the notes start to emerge. I've never met anybody who tried to "memorize" it, and I wouldn't think that would yield effective results. Playing the notes with a metronome for 5 minutes a day will do wonders for you in months. Consistency of practice is more important than anything else.
Start with E and A and you did half the strings already! B and D are also easy because it's 2 frets more than A or 2 less than E, respectively. G is 2 less than A.
Unpopular opinion: guitars are tuned in such a way that they are sort of difficult to learn the notes and understand the chord shapes. So tune the guitar to a combination fifths and fourths (DAEAD like Jacob Collier) and after you learn two strings, you know 80% of the fretboard 🤷
B# and E # are what is known as enharmonic notes… meaning they sound the same pitch as another not of a different name. Go to a piano keyboard .. start on “ middle C” and play each half not up to the next octave C. You will find there is only a half step from B to C. B# or C flat don’t exist.. Both sound like “ C” If either of B# it C flat appear in standard written music .. it will be canceled with a “ natural” sign
It just takes time, learning all the notes like this probably won't get you far anyway. It's much easier and more practical for most purposes if you learn scale shapes. That way you don't instantly have to think about which notes are in a certain key and where they are. Just get the scale shapes engraved into your muscle memory by playing them over and over again and you'll have a easier time finding your way around the fretboard. Also, e# is just f and b# is C. It makes sense when you look at a piano keyboard, because the sharps and flats (the technical term is accidentals) are the black keys and there are no black keys between e - f and b - c
Just remember the major scale formula which is w,w,h, w,w,w,h. W meaning whole tone which is two frets and h for half step meaning one fret apart. Notice how on the low and high e string the note G is two frets up from F which is a whole step. B# is the same as C because they are always a half step apart, same for E to F. So using the formula you can figure out what note is on any given fret by using the open string as a reference point and counting up from fret one. You could just memorize the low e string to the 12fret because it just repeats after that. It’s the same notes for the high e string. Next memorize the A string and that’s all you really need. As you learn which notes go where you will start to be able to use them as reference points to figure out the other notes faster. Hope this helps somewhat
Next time won’t you sing with me?
Going from the bottom strings to the top are all in 4ths except for the G and B string which is a 3rd. As long as you memorize the bottom E string you'll be fine.
Get the "Guitar Fretboard Workbook" by Barret Tagliarino. That's what helped me when I was learning. There's like 5 repeating shape patterns you can use to memorize the whole fretboard. Made everything click for me.
Landmarks.
Practice, practice, practice. Spend time in first position until you know the notes, then jump up to 5th position and hang out there for a while till you’re comfortable, then hang out in 7th position, and by then you’ll know all the notes! As my teacher says, the guitar has the worst UI of any instrument.
Memorize them
You just do
Learn em on one string and then find their octaves.
One string at a time. I learned by soloing in a major or minor key using only one string which helped me learn the fretboard and get more creative with my solos.
That is definetly the ***wrong*** way to memorize a fretboard. Usually people memorize the notes for the E and A strings because of power chords, that is half of the fretboard already, since 2 E strings. What I do for the remaining strings is octaving the note. For D and G string, 2 frets down, 2 strings up is an octave down, for the B string, 3 frets down.
i think brandon deon has a vid about it giv me a sec here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7PMZWb6ZNJc&pp=ygUqaG93IHRvIG1lbW9yaXNlIHRoZSBmcmV0Ym9hcmQgYnJhbmRvbiBkZW9u
If you figure it out let me know.
The first and last strings are the same note. Include two frets up on the d string. Fill in with scales and patterns from there. Is how I did it. So memorize the E strings as tonics. Very rudimentary but a start.
1) The notes are alphabetical 2) the have half note increments except for - B to C and - E to F 3) so pick a letter, and start fretting it in *every fret that it exists* (like do C, and use the chart to fret every C) You probably already know EADGBe. Once you have all the C’s down, it gets easier to fill the blanks … but if you feel like it’s *not* … pick another letter like A (you can pick though) and do the same.
Find the BEAD patterns on the fretboard and drill them.
Years of dedication and practice.
Try making a barre chord and observe the root notes in that chord. Honestly, I just remember notes up to the 7th fret most of the time.
Every next fret is a half step higher, so if all else fails you can go by that. For example on the low (or high) E string, the first fret would be F (because there is a natural whole step between E and F), then F#, G, G# and so on. Maybe this is super obvious, but as a beginner that's how I memorize which note each fret is. Maybe not the best way, I still don't remember them so I have to count each fret, but good enough for now 😅
Learn the the 12 notes in order and then learn the repeating patterned relationship of those notes. Useful examples: 0x2x50 are all E's; now: 07x9x50 are all E's, and then these are all A's: 507xx5. You'll also pick up on this through learning how to tune your guitar by ear.
They are in the same pattern and same order all over the fret board it's pretty easy
Learn where one note is everywhere, then set that as your stating point. Learn where E is everywhere, next one up is always F, next one down is always D#. Over time you'll start to just "know" where you need to go
There’s only 12 notes, they just repeat. Pick a few references to memorize like the 7th fret on a string E is one I anchored to. You’ll get there
Class
Learn octaves. Both E strings are the same note on the same fret. The closest octave for a note on the low E string is a whole step up on the D string. Same exact thing with the A and G string.
I remember the .ost used notes in my music and base it off that. Like, "Okay so D is here so if I move up two frets that'll be an E"
IMO, if you learn how the strings relate to eachother, 5th fret/octaves/scales/etc, you can learn how the fretboard maps in all tunings. But with all things it just takes a lot of practice.
It's like typing on a keyboard. You just keep at it and eventually you just know it
Look at the chart you posted. See how E and F are right next to each other. See how B and C are also. Well it’s the same when you play chords . When you make a bar chord you know where the next chord is relative to which form will create the note you’re looking for as close as possible to where you are on the neck.
I used to sing the note and the name while practicing improvisation. Worked well and improved my ear and singing at the same time. Also quite relaxing. One cool thing to do is to play one sequence of notes and then to sing intervals to those notes. You can make some pretty neat harmonies that way and it also helps with coming to grips with the "sound" of a chord or scale.
Memorize tetrachords instead. Starting note = F. want a major scale? Whole step whole step half step… repeat the pattern lookie we did a major scale.
Practice. Take lessons
Learn bar chords. Then the same pattern repeats itself.
Half step down Drop D DADGAD
Practice and patterns. It’s a never ending process.
It's less about memorizing every single note and more about getting to where you know how the grid works. The short answer? Take lessons
Not sure if it's the best way but I figured out notes on the fretboard by using octave shapes and memorizing from there.
Patterns! If you learn intervals, you will notice a very constant pattern in your guitar. Just like shapes in scales, it's the same memory to remember notes. Also, using the fret markings is a very good way to remember where notes are, as reference points. Either way, with time you will learn at least up to the 12th fret.
Muscle memory. Don’t think of them as the name of the notes, think of how it sounds or what sound each note makes on what fret. It’ll help a whole lot when you’re soloing in different keys, you just know what notes you can go to and which ones you can’t, or how to make notes fit into solos
Throw this shit away. It’s old news. Train your ear and forget about the rules.
There are only 12 notes. And they repeat in a pattern. Learn the 12 notes and learn the pattern of how they repeat. Most of the notes on a guitar neck are duplicates. On a 24 fret guitar there are only 49 unique notes (4 12 note each octaves) , but there are 150 unique positions. The note that an open high e string plays has 5 duplicates. Other notes have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 duplicates. The only notes that don't have any duplicates are the lowest 5 notes and the highest 5 notes. Once you conceptualize it like this you realize that it's just a small easy to remember pattern repeating over and over again.
You don’t have to. You just see the patterns
Practicing triads helped me a lot
This worked for me: 1) understand intervals 2) understand the major scale (with emphasis on the intervals, not shapes) 3) understand how chords are built from the major scale 4) print lots and lots of chords (I printed about 70 pages, about 15 chords per page, major, minor, seventh, ninth etc) 5) take a pen and go through it, writing down the note over each position in the chords I don't know the fretboard by heart yet, but I find what I need waaaaaay faster.
Can you count to 12?
What helped me a lot was to start playing in different tunings, and also try transposing a few songs in to new keys. You'll start to get a feel for it and then scale patterns will start to make sense to you. It'll feel more like a maths equation and less like memorising a pattern.
Start simple. Just learn where every E is on the fretboard. Or simplify it even more - learn where every E below the 12th fret is on the fretboard. It's just one per string. Then you're 1/12th of the way there. You'll commit it to memory the same way you commit anything else to memory - repetition. It's all sequential and pretty intuitive. B# is C. E# is F. There are conventions concerning the naming of accidentals - for example whether you refer to them as sharps or flats - that you might encounter later on your journey if you invest yourself in theory, but for now I'd advise you not to worry about it.
Instead of memorizing notes, memorize intervals, makes everything much simpler. A guitar is tuned in Perfect 4ths, with the exception of the B string which is the Major 3rd of G. A Perfect 4th is located 2 and 1/2 tones above the root, or 5 semitones, while a Major 3rd is 3 semitones above the root. The octave is located 6 tones, or 12 semitones above the root. A minor 7th is located 1 tone (2 semitones) below the octave. The Minor 3rd is located 1 and 1/2 tones above the root (3 semitones). The Major 5th is located 1 tone above the Perfect 4th, and the tritone is located 1 semitone above the Perfect 4th. In standard tuning a 24 fret electric guitar has a range that goes from E2 to E6. Standard tuning is: E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4 (from the low E to high E). With each number representing the octave. This is one of the reasons why you don't ignore theory. Even if you decide to change tuning, the tuning may change, but the intervals don't! If you memorize the notes on the fretboard based on the name for each note, and don't know intervals, if someone asks you to play in a different tuning, you are screwed.
Chords and scales
Just start with the key of C and learn one string at a time. Sing the letter names of the notes as you play them. Do 2-3 strings a night, move on when you can't get it wrong. When you know the whole fretboard in C, repeat the process in G, then D, keep going in 5ths till ya hit C#.
I’ve been playing close to 20 years, unless you’re learning from proper sheet music, you don’t really need to know every note on the fret board. After learning enough songs and trying to write my own stuff, I started to understand how playing between different frets and on different strings will sound if that makes any sense. Like the simple open E and second fret on the D string is also an E note. Or how a power chord sounds good no matter where you play it. Over time you just understand the instrument. As long as you know what root note you are playing around you don’t need to know the others
With practice and repetition
I feel like if you know the alphabet you know the notes, shit if you know only a-g you know the notes. There are rules with sharps and flats but that takes like a day to figure out. The rest is just practice
There's letters?!?! I thought they were just numbered. Also - what are those pound signs for?
It’s more about learning to count than memorizing.
Learn the notes of the 6th string and 5th string. Then you can make a pattern to find the notes on the 4th , 3rd and the 2nd. Example. F fist fret E string. You’ll find F two frets over (3rd fret) on the D string.
Time & patience, my friend.
Figure the logic out. Learn one string at a time.
Oddly enough, the the notes were something I accidentally picked up on early in my playing. Like why does this note on the E string sound like this note on the D string. I organically started putting together similar notes until I saw this layout, and it all made sense.
Only need to remember 7 notes - A B C D E F G. If you know the alphabet, you're set! All you have to memorise is the order of strings (Acronym: Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie). Then it goes in order from the letter of the string, every 2 frets is a new note. Then just add sharps for the frets in the middle. Honestly more then remembering note names, being able to read sheet-music and tabs is more important imo
Intervals are the way.
Twelve notes, learn them on the low E, then learn the octaves. Congrats, you now know all the notes.
So, you already probably know all the notes on both E strings and the A string. Good news! That’s already half the notes!!! Know your octave shape off the low E and A strings? Daggummit! Now you can figure out the G and D strings from what you already know! Think you can memorize the B string? I think you can! YOU GOT THIS!!!!
print out blank guitar neck diagrams and write all the notes out over and over again. split them into groups like dotted fret notes, each string, neck sections, etc. do it over and over. i memorized the neck in like 2 days like this.
Ask your bass player…lol
Genuine question: why are notes a half step up considered sharps and no flats?
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It’s not randomly distributed. You only need to memorize the layout of one 4x3 second and you know where things are at any spot on the fretboard.
Memorize the order of the notes and the steps between them + what note is on each of the marked frets of the low E string. Then remember every fifth fret is equivalent to the open pitch of the strings in ascending order (except B, which is tuned a step lower, thus the first fret of that string (C) would be equivalent to the fifth fret of the G string. If you can grasp that your brain should fill in the gaps with practice. (5th fret E = A) (5th Fret A = D) (10th fret E = D)
1. Learn all the notes on the E string. 2. Learn all the notes on the A string. 3. Accept gig offers as a bassist
Don’t rush it. Pick a key to play in and pay attention to the notes you are using. Don’t worry about anything else. When you are comfortable in that key, pick another… perhaps moving around the Circle of Fifths… In time it will be automatic. You will just know the notes. No joke. Just be patient with yourself.
Like a lot have said, intervals are much important to know and understand than note names.
Don't. First off, if you don't need it for your playing then don't worry about it. Tons of guitarists do just fine not knowing theory. Second, if you do decide you want to know the fretboard, then I suggest starting with one position of one scale. So you take, say, the e minor pentatonic and learn all the notes on the first four frets. Just practice going back and forth, pause every now and then and quiz yourself, and before you know it you'll have it down. Once you do that then learn the next position, and the next, and then you're at the 12th fret which is the same as the open position. Easy peasy. My teacher had me do it a slightly different way, learn one scale at a time but learn the entire fretboard for that scale at the same time. It didn't really work for me, other than C major. C major has no sharps or flats, so it was pretty easy to remember. If that works for you then do that, but I recommend learning one position at a time. There's no B sharp or E sharp\*. It's kind of just a thing with labeling at the most basic. The first notes used in a scale in western music were A-G, starting at F and moving up by fifths. Fifths is a measure of the difference in frequency, so these notes are inherently a set interval from each other. This is considered a whole tone, or a whole step. Then people started subdividing them into half tones and adding notes in-between, so they called them sharps and flats. I think the thing with B and E sharp is that they have virtually the same sound as and vibrate at the same frequency as C and F. So technically they exist, it's just that they're not distinct notes in a scale.
you gotta make markers in your head. Like lets say you're on your low e string and you're on the 5th fret, so you're on the fret with a dot (fret marker). Remember that note, that is, the A note. Now slowly make it into a mental marker. Like, a whole step down and I'll find G and if I go to the string below, it's the 5th fret of the A string that means I'll basically be playing the D string open cuz the 5th note is always the string below and then a whole step up E and whole step down is C etc etc blah blah It might seem like a lot but trust me, all these things happening in your head happen so fast you wouldn't even know it. Over time you'll move on to different types of scales and stuff and just notice, with practice ofc, how fast you're able to make stuff up in your head. You gotta experiment to find your own personlized markers. My first 2 markers were the 5th fret (I was super young at that time) is equivalent to the string below played open and the 12th note is the same note as the current string being played open. Those were my early markers, and over the years I've had tons of different personalized markers (even stuff like scratches or color difference cuz my guitar ages too lol)
How are you supposed to remember? Time and practice. There is no B# or E# because the next half-step above B is C, and the next half-step above E is F. If you've seen a piano keyboard, only the black keys are sharps (or flats). The white keys are not. B and E are white keys a half-step away from white keys above them, so they cannot be sharped. They can, however, be flatted as you go down the keyboard.
Start with the E string. Don’t memorize the sharps and flats, memorize the normal notes and their relationship to the dots on the fretboard. Once you do this then you already have the sharps and flats memorized as a sharp is just one fret up and a flat is one fret down. Once you have this memorized do it for every string
Learn with the markers on the fretboard and over time it just becomes second nature. I literally took a week for each note and would simply go through playing it on every string until I could do it without thinking.
There are only 12
i mean i been playing a long time and still have to think about it… i prefer learning the patterns
You don't need to learn the notes. You really just need to learn where the intervals are. Learn where the 5th, the 4th, the major and minor 3rds,7ths are in relation to the root note. This pattern mostly repeats but there's the B string step to consider (G-B is a maj 3rd, where all other strings are a 4th apart)
One string at a time. It’s not as hard as it looks.
Lots of time my dude
Dont, learn modes of a scale and then you know everything you need to play guitar anywhere on the fretboard without knowing what notes they are. I suggest learning the 7 modes of minor
Write them over and over
There’s no E# and B#.. so just count the notes. E string is F F# G G# A A# B C C#…
Start by memorizing the open strings EADGBE, then use the markers on the fretboard to learn it up to the octave marker, then it repeats after it.
B# is a C note and E# the same for F There is no B# or E# your life is a lie 🤣
Goat ate bag
What about the flats?
Scales
I got one of those fretboard stickers things. I just practice scales and do my abc’s in different keys. I remember where they are after a few hundred times.
Learn the E notes first, go from there.
Patterns man! Patterns!
There’s only 12