Learn Your Fretboard

The Essential Memorization Guide for Guitar (Book + Online Bonus Material)

Luke Zecchin

• Publisher: GuitarIQ.com
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780992550714
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

FRETBOARD MEMORIZATION MADE EASY

Do you get lost on the guitar neck? Not knowing the notes on the fretboard is a common problem that slows down and confuses the learning process. It's very difficult to find your way around if you can't read the map! Fortunately, developing a working knowledge of the fretboard is among the simplest and most beneficial things a guitar player can do to streamline and accelerate their learning.

Learn Your Fretboard offers a fresh and straightforward approach to memorizing the guitar neck. This handbook outlines a definitive system for fretboard visualization that will inspire breakthroughs for guitar players of all skill levels. Regardless of whether you've tried and failed before, this is the perfect companion for any guitarist wanting to develop a command of the fretboard in real playing situations!

ONLINE BONUS: This book is complete with free online bonus material. It comes bundled with a companion website to enhance your learning experience. Extras include audio examples, backing tracks, bonus downloads, and more.

Join thousands of students worldwide! Like easy-to-follow lessons, pro playing tips, and jam-packed value? You'll love learning from this international bestselling instructor.

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Chapter One

FRETBOARD BASICS

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This first chapter explores the basic structure of the fretboard and establishes a simple rule for locating any note on the guitar neck.

Refining Our Focus

The fretboard can certainly seem overwhelming at first. Just looking at the guitar neck, we’re confronted by various strings, an expanse of frets, a bunch of dots, and an assortment of musical notes. That’s all before we even try to play anything! Our task as guitar players is to process and make sense of all this information. Unfortunately, for many aspiring musicians, this task just seems too difficult or time consuming.

The premise we’re working with, however, is that memorizing the notes on the fretboard can be neither difficult nor time consuming. Although learning anything of value requires a bit of effort, for a moment let’s forget the seeming enormity of this task and simply focus on a few key aspects of what we can see:

• First, although we’re staring at over 130 different notes across the guitar fretboard, there’s actually a large amount of repetition here. Remember, the musical alphabet has only 12 notes, and these notes repeat in a consistent and predictable fashion.
• Second, even though a standard guitar usually has 22 or more frets, we can see that the 12th fret is a direct repetition of the open strings (just one octave higher in pitch). If we dissect the guitar neck at this point, we’re basically left with an identical mirror image between the bottom half and top half of the fretboard. This means learning the fretboard is only half as difficult as it first appears!

This can be consolidated further to help streamline the information we’re working with. Since each fret represents a half step, all sharps and flats on the fretboard can be understood as shared tones between notes (e.g., G♯ and A♭ occupy the same fret). In other words, sharps and flats can be viewed in their proximity to natural notes (notes without sharps or flats). For example, if we can pinpoint F on the fretboard, by default we’ll also be able to locate F♯, given that the two notes are so closely related. With that in mind, it makes sense initially to concentrate our focus solely on the natural notes of the musical alphabet. This makes the task of fretboard memorization much simpler and more manageable. Notice the key things we can now observe:

• First, if it’s not already clear, the high E string on the guitar is an exact replica of the low E string. Conveniently, we’re only really dealing with learning the notes across five different strings, not six. This means over 30% of the work in memorizing the fretboard is already done for us, just from learning the low E string!
• Second, the musical alphabet cycles in a consistent pattern across the fretboard. The seven natural notes move from A to G before looping back to A again. This sequence always occurs in a straightforward and predictable way. Each note simply moves up one whole step (two frets) from the last note. The only exceptions to this are between B to C and E to F. These notes are connected by just one half step (one fret).

Tip: Another way of saying this is that every note has its own sharp except B and E.

One Fret or Two?

The last point in the previous section is fundamental for mapping out notes across the entire guitar fretboard. Without even realizing it, we’ve just learned a simple system we can apply to the fretboard, with little need for brain training or memorization. Why? Because we already know the exact distance from each note on the fretboard to the next. Starting at the open strings and playing through each natural note of the musical alphabet, we’re confronted by just one basic question: To play the next note, do I move up one fret or two?

The answer is simple! Running through the alphabet, every natural note ascends by a whole step until we reach either B or E. These notes will only move up by a half step. In other words, each natural note counts up two frets, except B and E, which only count up one. For example, applying our system from the open 5th string, we know B must be two frets from A, but C will be one fret from B, and so on.

A Basic Checklist

This first chapter has revisited the absolute fundamentals of fretboard anatomy. Hopefully, these introductory concepts will already be familiar to many. In the following chapters, we’ll explore more innovative and useful ways of working with this information. Before continuing, however, it’s important to make sure we clearly understand the basics. Here are some simple questions you should be able to answer before moving forward:

• What notes occur across the open strings when a guitar is in standard tuning?
• Which two strings share an identical sequence of notes?
• Approximately how many frets are there on a normal guitar fretboard?
• At which fret do the no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Fretboard Memorization Workshop
• Contents
• Preface
• Online Bonus Material
• Introduction
• 1. FRETBOARD BASICS
• Refining Our Focus
• One Fret or Two?
• A Basic Checklist
• Exercise 1
• Exercise 2
• 2. BUILDING A FRAMEWORK
• Location & Integration
• Vertical Anchor Points
• Fretboard Acronyms
• Exercise 3
• Exercise 4
• 3. MOVABLE OCTAVE SHAPES
• Fretboard Repetitions
• Moving Shapes
• Connecting the Dots
• Exercise 5
• Exercise 6
• 4. ADVANCED NAVIGATION
• Floating Reference Points
• Half-Step Note Groupings
• Whole-Step Note Groupings
• Exercise 7
• Exercise 8
• 5. VISUALIZATION & INTEGRATION
• Repetition Is Key
• Tips on Memorization
• Fretboard Worksheets
• Worksheet 1
• Worksheet 2
• Worksheet 3
• Worksheet 4
• Exercise 9
• Exercise 10
• Final Thoughts
• Liked This Book?
• Additional Resources
• About the Author
• Books by Luke Zecchin
• Special Offer