Guitarrr! Great Exercises for Guitar Players » Fretboard Knowledge

How well do you know the fretboard?

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:15:49 +0000

Chess masters can play chess in their mind without having chess board at sight, but how many guitar players have a clear picture of all the notes on the guitar fretboard? Too say the least many have no idea what notes are there on the fretboard even when they are looking at it.

Visualizing fretboard is a great exercise that can be done literally at any time and any place. It is not easy at first, so take your time. Start with a single string on just one fret (remember open positions!) and build your fretboard step by step going from fret to fret and from string to string. Practice visualizing scale patterns, chords, arpeggios, riffs, solos, anything you can think of.

When you feel comfortable with naming the notes, try to learn degrees of the scale (interval from the root) as well. That will come in handy for many things like building chords.

Learning Guitar Notes on the Fretboard: Satriani Exercise

admin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:46:48 +0000

Here is a great exercise for testing how well you know the guitar notes on the fretboard. It comes from Joe Satriani (aka Satch)’s Guitar Secrets book, which is a treasure chest for any guitar player.

The essense of the Satriani Exercise, or Satch Exercise if you please, is very simple: find the notes one by one all over fretboard.

Here is how it works:

Set the metronome to 50-60 bpm
Choose any note (lets do F for illustration)
Start with 6th string. With every tic of the metronome locate the F on the given string. First one will be on the 1st fret, second on 13th fret. Next move to the 5th string. F will be on the 5th string 3rd fret, next one will be on the 5th string [fill in the lank] fret and so on. You can start from the 1st string and work your way up. The idea is to find all the possible locations for the chosen note. Do not forget about open strings.
Lower the tempo if you cannot find the notes in time, and raise it if you feel bored…

If you are not very familiar with the notes on the fretboard, it is good idea to learn 1-2 notes so that you know them well, and then add notes one by one. C and G are good ones to start with. Good time to do such Satch Exercise is during the break from more intensive workout, like working on alternate picking or legato. Give your hands some rest and get the brain to work!

Guitar notes on the fretboard: full-Color Fretboard Diagram

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:08:42 +0000

Knowing the notes on fretboard is essential for any guitar player and fretboard diagrams come in handy for this task. Here is a nice full-color fretboard diagram with all the notes you need to know.

click the fretboard diagram for a full-size version

Here is a simplified diagram that does not look so dreadful. It shows only diatonic notes (the ones with no sharp and flat), the ones you should learn first!

click the fretboard diagram for a full-size version

As you might have noticed the notes on the 12th fret are exactly the same as the ones in the open position. Same is true for all the following frets. Notes after 12th fret are repeated, but they are one octave higher. This fact calls for even further simplification of the fretboard diagram:

As you can see there are only few notes left to learn Memorize these and you will be good. Oh, by the way, notes on the 6th and 1st string are the same too!

Learning notes on fretboard can be a dreadful task, so you need to divide and conquer and take in bit by bit. There are many ways to learn the notes. We will get to them soon. For now just study the fretboard diagrams given above and try to see how the notes are positioned. Try to find some patterns there!

Print out a dozen of blank guitar fretboard diagrams and use them to draw the notes you learn! Study individual strings, groups of string, positions, single notes, etc. You will discover that fretboard is an exciting place and is not that weird after all.