Lesson: Learning the fretboard
In order to move beyond playing simple "open chords" (chords that involve playing open strings), we must first take care of a few necessities; learning note names on the 6th and 5th strings. There are several ways to go about doing this, and I will try to demonstrate them.
It is important for all musicians to undertand the way the "musical alphabet" works. It is similar in many respects to the "regular" alphabet, in that it uses standard letters (a, b, c...). Where it differs, is that in the musical alphabet, the letters only progress up to G, upon which, they begin again at A. As you continue up the musical alphabet, the pitches of the notes get higher (when you go past G up to A again, the notes continue to get higher, they don't start at a low pitch again.)
On the guitar, each of these letter names represents a specific fret on the fretboard. Between each letter name, there is a "blank" fret (these are the sharps and flats, which we'll deal with in a moment) WITH 2 EXCEPTIONS.
Between the notes B and C, and also between the notes E and F, there is no "blank" fret; these notes are directly following each other on the fretboard. This is visible in the following diagram of the guitar fretboard:
As you can see, the note F directly
follows the note E on the 6th string of the guitar (referred to
as the "E string" because that is the letter name of
the open string.) As you continue up the string, you'll see that
the notes G and A are separated by a blank fret, as are A and
B. This is when we encounter the other exception; the note C directly
follows B on the fretboard. Between C and D, there is a blank
fret, as there also is between D and E. You've now worked your
way up to the 12th fret of the guitar, and are back at the letter
E again.
The process is the exact same on the 5th string (the "A string")
as it was on the 6th string. Try working up the string without
looking at the diagram, saying out loud each letter name until
you've reached the 12th fret, and are back at the letter A again.
Remember: no space between B and C, and also between E and F.
I have found that the best way to go about learning the fretboard
is to start by committing several note names and frets to memory
on each string. For example, if you've memorized that, on the
6th string, A is at the 5th fret, and C is at the 8th fret, if
you are required to find the note D, instead of counting all the
way up from the open string (E), you can count up 2 frets from
C, because you know it is at the 8th. This makes things much quicker.
As time progresses, you will naturally start to remember where
all the other notes are.
Eventually, it will become necessary to learn note names on all
six strings, but for now, we'll focus on just the 6th and 5th
strings, because these ones will become immediately useful when
we start to deal with barre chords in our next lesson.
If you have any questions or comments about
the above lesson, please don't hesitate to e-mail me and let me
know, at guitar.guide@mingingco.com
