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Guitar Notes – How to learn the notes on the fretboard and have more fun playing your Guitar

By Mike Hayes | June 30, 2009

Mastery of all the notes on the guitar fretboard is essential for all serious guitarists. If there is one musical banana peel that trips 97% of newbie players it’s the lack of knowledge of the fretboard.

All aspects of musical theory, such as chord construction,
scales, improvisation, chord substitution etc., rely on knowing the names of the notes and their position on the fretboard.

The very best of the top flight musician/guitarists can also read standard music notation and know the location of the appropriate notes on the fingerboard.

If you are having trouble with this important part of your guitar
playing you are not on your own.

To be fair the guitar is a difficult instrument to visually see
and understand many theoretical concepts, instruments such as the
piano and vibes are much easier to learn theory on.

I always like to incorporate two or more theoretical concepts at
the same time thus associating, reinforcing and applying material
learnt at previous practice sessions.

Here’s an example of one of the ways I approach the fingerboard to visually lock the notes into my memory for high speed recall.

By moving in a anti-clockwise manner around the circle of fifths
we produce the following progression.

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

Using this progression as a basic framework I firstly restrict
myself to one string, lets’ say in this instance the sixth
string.

The fret location of our circle of fifths progression will result
in the following sequence.

Sixth string fret location:

C = 8th fret/ F = 1st fret/ Bb = 6th fret/ Eb = 11th fret/ Ab =
4th fret / Db = 9th fret/ F# = 2nd fret/ B = 7th fret/ E =
12th fret / A = 5th fret/ D = 10th fret/ G = 3rd fret

Did you notice that by playing through our circle of fifths progression you will have played every note on the sixth string between the first and twelfth fret?

Now supposing you wanted to move through this same progression
using only six moves instead of twelve.

Here is the fingerboard code for the sixth and fifth strings:

Sixth and fifth string code = back two frets

What this code means is that if you played this exact same circle
progression on the sixth and fifth strings you would play the
following sequence:

Sixth and filth string combination using the “back two frets
code”.

Sixth and fifth string fret location:

C = 8th fret/ F = 8th fret/ Bb = 6th fret/ Eb = 6th fret/ Ab =
4th fret / Db = 4th fret/ F# = 2nd fret/ B = 2nd fret/ E =
12th fret / A = 12th fret/ D = 10th fret/ G = 10 fret

Notice how you play two notes on the same fret then move back two
frets and play the next two notes then proceed to move back two
frets to play the next two notes in the sequence.

Our original progression becomes …

C and F on the eight fret, move back two frets, Bb and Eb on the
sixth fret, move back two frets Ab and Db on the fourth fret move
back two frets etc.

The really neat thing about these fretboard codes is that you can
do them in your head without an instrument in your hands.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com

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