Guitar
Learning the Fretboard
By Johnny Gillard
As a Guitarist, I found one of our real problems is knowing and being comfortable with the notes on the fretboard. Here is part of a method I have developed to learning the fretboard that accomplishes 3 things:
- You are learning ALL the notes in ALL positions.
- There is no box or shape. Only a pattern of Natural Notes. The notes in between are Sharps or flats
- This will not take 3 years.
The idea here is to learn all the "white notes" from the keyboard and then add excercises to learn the sharps and flats with keys, etc.. below is an example (Fingerboard #1): The fingerings are (dashes are shifts to new position):
E string 0,1,3-1,3,4-1,3
B String 0,1,3-1,2,4-1,3,4
G String 0,1,3,4-1,3,4-4
D String 0,1,2,4-1,3,4-4
A String 0,1,2,4-1,2,4-4
E String 0,1,3-1,3,4-1,3
Now experiment with various fingerings but the ones I have included are good for changing positions to me and seem to be helpful in remembering the patterns. The idea here is once you remember all the natural notes (the white keys on the keyboard) on the fretboard then knowing what is a sharp or flat is much easier. The Full Fretboard looks like Fingerboard #2 below.
Here are the fingerings to use and memorize. These are the easiest way to learn the pattern. Later on we will exercise using this pattern how to learn the fretboard. This is great exercise because the fretboard is "demystified" and there are no special positions in your mind once you learn this method. Also the fretboard can open up easier as one big scale for playing in certain keys much easier. Soloing becomes less anxious for your brain. Rememebr to try them ascending and descending.
