In this week’s free guitar lesson aka, the TIP OF THE WEEK, I’m going to show you a simple technique for remembering all the notes on the fretboard.

This is the technique I used myself to learn all the notes on the fretboard, and the same technique that I’ve passed onto countless students!

So guitars at the ready… you’re about to learn something! 😉

Kris m/

NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD EXERCISES

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TIP OF THE WEEK #2 – NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD TRANSCRIPT

INTRO:

Hi guys,

Im Kris Petersen, founder of thelickfactory.com. Welcome back to another tip of the week. Today we’ll be looking at a simple technique and a method of remembering all the notes on the fretboard.

Now right about there, i’m sure that the majority of you just went “right, stop… next, next video, lets have a look”. But just hold off for one second.

Chances are, without even knowing it, you already know all the notes on the fretboard. I’m just gonna show you to unlock it.

Now what are the differences between players that know the notes on the fretboard and those that don’t? Well realistically you can get through an entire career without knowing any of the notes at all. Guitar is a patterned instrument. You can play through, solo, play chord changes and be a guitar hero without knowing anything at all when it comes to the individual notes your playing. And there is nothing wrong with that.

In my experience what i’ve found that if you know the notes on the fretboard, what it enables you to do is adapt quicker, learn faster and helps you to know exactly whats going on at all times. And what this does is helps you to get more gigs. Get more work and that is important to all of us!

So with that being said, lets get into it.

LESSON:

So I can pretty much hear you screaming at me now to show you this technique!

So knowing the notes on the fret board is a very simple thing to do if you know one thing. That is knowing the notes on the Low E and A strings already. Now if you have a basic understanding of chords or scales like pentatonic scales, you probably know these notes already. Because these chord and scale shapes rely on you knowing the notes on both these strings to use the patterns and shapes.

Now if you’re not aware of these notes already. Unfortunately you do need to sit down and nut out these two strings, the E and the A. This technique that i’m about to show you relies on this.

If you do know those notes, lets run through the technique.

Lets take the A on the 5th fret on the 6th string. This naming technique uses something I call relative positioning or relative octave-ing. It’s knowing where the same note is at the higher and lower octave in reference to where the original tonic is.

So if we take the A on the 5th fret there, we go down two strings, so down towards the floor, so higher in pitch up to the D string, then up two frets towards the bridge we end up with the A at the higher octave. So down two strings, up two frets.

We can then repeat the same process again going down to the next string, so it ends up looking at the B string. So we’re on the D string on the 7th fret, we go down 2 strings, through the G to the B. This time we move up 3 frets to the 10th fret, and that gives us the higher octave A as well.

So what that enables you to do is pick a random note on the fretboard, so lets take the 8th fret on the B string. On a side note, the B string is traditionally the string that becomes a bit elusive to guitarists learning all the notes on the fretboard. In any case with that note on the 8th fret, we can reverse the process to find out what it is. Back three frets to the 5th, up two strings to the D string 5th fret. Then back two frets to the 3rd fret and up tow strings to the low E to discover the tonic. Which is G. SO our beginning note on the 8th fret /B string is G.

You’re probably thinking ‘OK thats easy enough, no problems’. But what happens if the note falls on one of the other 3 strings? The high E string should be easy enough. The notes are the same as the low E string, so you should know that already. However, what you can do is double check yourself.

The same technique that we just used for the E string, works on the A string as well. SO if we play the D on the 5th fret on the A string, go down 2 strings to the G string and up two frets to the 7th fret, we have the first relative octave. Then down two strings again to the high E and up 3frets to the 10th fret and we once again have D. And if you compare that to the Low E string, its the same note as well.

So it pretty simple. The technique is using relative octave positioning. Now i do have a bunch of exercises here that will help you learn the notes on the fret board very very easily, and i guarantee that within two weeks, you’ll be looking at a note and be able to name it without too much effort. I’ll share this with you right here today. So what you need to do is click on the lick below in the description and that will take you over to the lick factory blog site, and i have that lesson for you right there and you can check that out.

Until next week then, that’s the tip of the week. I’m Kris Petersen, i’ll see you later.
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