How to Find the Notes on Your Guitar Fretboard - 481

Mapping the musical alphabet

0:00Lee here from Play Guitar Academy. We're going to be talking about the musical alphabet today. Do you know the musical alphabet? I'm sure you do. It's A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. And that's it. There's no H, there's no Z, all the way in between. None of those. But what we're going to be showing is how those map across the fretboard. It's easy on the piano. Those are just the white keys back and forth. And then the black keys are called accidentals.

0:30Naturals and accidentals. The naturals are not so easy to find on the guitar. But I'm going to give you a quick formula so we can know what all the notes are that are not sharps or flats very easily on the fretboard. And that's using the major scale. Here is an example of a C major scale. And we've got the formula right in there with it. So we have whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. This formula is very important. A whole step is two frets. A half step is one fret.

1:01We start on C. We'll be able to find out all of the natural notes on the fretboard. Here's a C right here. Whole step to D. Another whole step to E. Half step to F. Whole step to G. Whole step to A. Whole step to B. Half step back to C. Notice that there's only two places that do not have a whole step in between the notes.

1:33Between E and F. And between B and C. So if you're new to this, I'd like for you to take that formula. Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. Start on the A string at the third fret and make that C major scale, showing you where all the white keys are on that one string. That's level one. But level two would start to take those across the rest of the string. Let's see if we can find some other Cs to start on. Let's go to the high E string. Here's my C at the eighth fret and I'm going to go up whole step to D, another whole step to E, half, whole, whole, whole, whole, half.

2:11So there is another octave up of our C major scale and we can continue going back.

2:22We've run out. That was an E. So F to E. Here's a D and here's a C. So let's try from this C here on the B string. Whole to D, whole to E, half to F, whole, whole, whole, half. Let's try from this C here on the G string at the fifth fret. Whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half. Let's try from the C here at the D string. Whole step to D, whole step to E, F, G, A, B, C.

2:55And then let's do it on the low string. Whole step to D on the tenth fret. E, there's another whole step. F is half step, whole step to G, whole step to A, whole step to B, half step to C. Going up and down one string is really nice. You can really visualize how the notes are laid out, all of these white keys on the piano. But if we stay in one place, say at the third fret or the fifth fret, how can we figure that same formula out across the strings?

3:27So let's start at C on the A string. And we're going to go up a whole step. That's D. Now we need to go up another whole step. That would be E, but we're going to stay in this position. We need to find an E on the next string. This is D, D sharp, E. So C, D, E. Those are our whole steps. Half step to F, whole step to G. Now we want another whole step. That would take us to A, but we need to find it on the next string. G, G sharp, A.

3:55Another whole step to B, and then a half step to C.

4:01That's the way we get these scale patterns that go across the guitar instead of going up and down. It's the same thing. They're the same notes. They're just voiced in a way that you don't have to move your hand.

Finding the accidentals

4:12So for a level three practice of this, let's try and find the other notes, the accidentals. We've got the natural notes now. Let's find the notes in between. So if this is our first note, C, and we have a whole step to D, there's a note that's in between those two notes. This is the black key that's on the piano. We'll call this either C sharp, that means one higher than C, or D flat, that means one lower than D, so that's what it sounds like with all three of them, C, D, D flat.

4:43Now the next note starts with a D, and we go to an E. There's a note in between those that's either D sharp or E flat. From E, we go to F. We have no half step there. But between F and G, we have a note that's either F sharp or G flat. Same note, two different names. Depends on which way you go. Now we have a note between G and A. This is either G sharp or A flat. And between A and B, we have one more that's either A sharp or B flat.

5:15And then we end up on C. So knowing all of this, knowing that this is how the fretboard works and how it overlaps, it's not so hard, right? It just starts to make sense. You were playing those notes up and down the fretboard.

Moving beyond guitar shapes

5:28It's not that difficult. But how come some people spend 20, 30, 40 years trying to learn the guitar and they never figure out how things work? Well, the problem is the way the guitar is usually taught. Most people learn shapes before they learn the notes that are underneath them. This guitar, shapes are incredibly important. It makes it very easy to think visually on the guitar. We have the D major chord that's a triangle shape, the shape of the G major chord.

6:02When we learn those, most people don't learn what the notes are that are being played, that are in those chords at the time. Because we want to get started quickly. Everyone wants to make some sounds that sound good to each other. So once we learn the chord shapes, then what's the next thing we do? We start to learn scale patterns. These patterns go up and down. So we think of 1, 2, 4, 1, 2, 4, 1, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4, 2, 4, 1, 2, 3. It's easy to remember those things. But in the beginning, no one's saying B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.

6:35No one's saying those things. Why? Because that takes a little bit more thought. It takes a little bit more energy. We want to get up and started quickly. We learn riffs. We learn finger patterns. We use tablature where everyone is doing everything they can to play this guitar without understanding what the notes are on the guitar. And that's what I would like for you to start doing. Start thinking about what is it that you're actually playing? You could take a song that you've been playing for 20 years that you figured out by shapes

7:06and spend an afternoon thinking, hey, well, what is that first shape? Well, it's got an E, a B, an E, and a G sharp. Or that's an E major chord. In the beginning, you may have to work your way up the fretboard to figure out what each of the notes are. That's time well spent. It may feel like, oh, I'll never get this. Make yourself do it. Make yourself go through walking up the fretboard to figure out what the notes are that are underneath your fingers in the chords, the riffs, and the scales that you're playing.

7:37Don't get me wrong. Shapes aren't the enemy. Shapes are great. They let us make music quickly. They simplify some of the most complicated things on the guitar. But the problem comes when the knowledge stops at that shape. Notes start to add meaning to these things. If you understand how notes work together, you know what the root is. If you know what the third is. If you know what the fifth is. You know why those notes are important, which notes are strong and which notes are weak. That is going to help you unlock the fretboard and start making sense of things that you may

8:11already be playing. Always ask yourself, what notes are underneath my fingers and how does knowing those notes change the way that I see the fretboard? Another reason people spend so many years really not understanding how the fretboard works is they try to memorize everything on the fretboard instead of understanding the function. What's the big problem with the guitar? The big problem with the guitar is it's too much. One, we can't remember all of this. We can't. If I told you, hey, these are all the notes on the fretboard.

8:41I'm expecting you to play this. It'd be too overwhelming for you. Another thing is our hand can't physically play across the fretboard at all at one time. We have to move back and forth. We've got a good four or five fret span here that we can handle right here. The giant fretboard diagram is a big problem. Have you ever seen a guitar at a garage sale or at a pawn shop? You notice a few things.

9:12Usually, there's two places on the guitar where all the frets are worn down, usually open position and at the fifth fret. Why? Because people try to memorize that. They'll pick one place and try to know everything they can about that. You'll notice at the fifth fret, usually that's where they'll play A minor pentatonic. Those are the notes that are all worn down. In the open position, it's where all the chords are. This is memorizing here. We're missing the way that the guitar functions. We're missing the way that the notes spread across the fretboard. The truth is that no matter where your hand is on the guitar, you have every scale and

9:47every chord that you could ever need right there. You don't have to move somewhere else. You just have to understand what the notes are on the fretboard at the time. You think, okay, how am I supposed to do that? We'll start with the musical alphabet. You need a place to land. You need to understand where the seven natural notes are. These are going to give us landmarks. This will tell you where the notes are in the key of C. Okay, Lee, I'm learning these notes. Why is this important? Well, it connects the things that you already play. Scales. These become more than just patterns.

10:19You can locate the root notes. You can start understanding the notes inside the pattern. What's the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth? Why are they important? Which ones are strong and which ones are weak? Patterns begin connecting yourself to the larger fretboard, moving from one pattern to the next, to the next, being able to work across and up and down. Chords become more understandable when you know the notes. You'll be able to find the roots of the chords. You'll be able to move these shapes. Once you start to move these chords, the notes that are under your fingers will change and

10:50you'll be able to see why they work together. You begin seeing the relationships between chords and scales. The result of understanding the notes under your fingers is the fretboard becomes one instrument. There's a system to how this works. And if you understand the system, learning something new becomes very easy. You can go down a lot of different styles of music, different avenues, and realize that the basics are the same. And understanding how your fretboard works is going to allow you to navigate all of them. You're going to be less dependent on a box here or a box there.

11:23You're going to have more confidence moving around the neck. You're going to have a foundation for everything that we're going to add during the next few weeks in our fretboard series.

Practice goals for the week

11:32So the goal of this week isn't to sit down and memorize every note on the guitar. It's to get good at finding them. Start with C. Use the musical alphabet. Find the natural notes. Move the exercise to different strings. And when you're ready, use those natural notes as landmarks for finding your sharps and flats. Do that for five minutes a day this week and pay attention to how much faster those locations start to show up. If you like practicing this way, that's really the whole idea about what I'm building at Play Guitar Academy. You don't need another pile of random guitar lessons. You need a way to turn what you've already learned into something you can actually use and

12:06practice. That's why I make toolkits. A Play Guitar Academy toolkit takes one area of your playing and brings everything together. It's got the lessons, the exercises, the practice routines, the backing tracks, the worksheets and tool all in one place and they all work together so you know what to practice and what to do next to see results. And when you're ready to work on another part of your playing, head over to the academy and choose the toolkit that's right for you. Okay, I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.