You can learn the guitar fretboard in a very short period of time

The reason people often have difficulty in learning is because they

1. CAN'T SEE THE BIG PICTURE

2. DON'TBREAK THINGS DOWN INTO MANAGEABLE CHUNKS

An example of the BIG picture in relation to the fretboard is:

'The same notes are repeated over and over and over'

The manageable chunks are:

'There are only six strings to learn' = one a day for 6 days


So let's look at one of the manageble chunks.

In music you only need to know a small section of the alphabet A B C D E F G

The lowest sounding string on a guitar is generally tuned to E

If we were only using ABCDEFG and were going from A to B to C to D etc the sound would be getting a little higher. Don't worry too much about the detail, just try and get an overview.

And again if we were only using ABCDEFG and were going from G to F to E to D etc the sound would be getting a bit lower, not much just a little.

So the first thing you need to master is the letters of the alphabet A B C D E F G and what will be extremely useful for the future is to learn those 7 letters backwards. G F E D C B A

So there are two simple things to learn:

1. There are only 7 letters of the alphabet to learn

2. It's useful to learn them backwards

What I‘ve noticed is that many self taught guitarists don’t see the pattern of notes as they move up the fretboard, “ABCDEFG”. Maybe the confusion came about because of a misunderstanding about sharps and flats and / or a music teacher told them, “ Every good boy deserves fruit”, no wonder music students are confused. I was discussing this issue with my good friend the guitar great (the late) Ike Isaacs about 25 years ago, and we both decided that it should be outlawed as it is quite nonsensical and is really a hinderence to the learning process.

To put it simply:

a Sharp is ONE NOTE HIGHER, up one fret on the guitar

a Flat is ONE NOTE LOWER, one fret down the neck closer to the tuning pegs.

The rule is:

There are no sharps or flats between B and C

There are NO sharps or flats between E and F

This means there are sharps and flats between all the other notes

A and B
C and D
F and G
G and A

LEARN THE NOTES ON THE NECK - E String

There are only 7 letters of the alphabet to learn - A B C D E F G
It’s good to know them back to front – GFEDBA
Between B and C and also between E and F there are no SHARPS or FLATS
A SHARP note is one note closer to the sound hole
A FLAT is one note closer to the tuning pegs

Now let’s put that in to practice

The lowest sounding string is an E string …Yes?

So if we apply the information written above we can start naming the notes as we work our way up the neck, and to keep it simple for the moment we’ll forget FLATS exist:


E---- F---- F sharp ---- G ---- G sharp ----A ---- A sharp ----- B---- C