Fretboard 101 Part 2 – Fretting About The Board

So I lied. I said 10 days. Apparently I’m not the only one who has things to publish on the site. Who knew?

Well hopefully you have been doing the relatively easy exercises, familiarizing yourself with the frets we learned last time. Just to refresh, we learned the names and notation for the open strings and the notes you tune to. This week we are going to end the brute force memorization pretty darn quickly. One fret and one scale and you are on your way to enlightenment.

The one fret is the tenth

Why did I pick this one? If you take a look, you’ll notice there are no sharps or flats to be found. The tenth fret, and the fret one octave higher, fret 22, are the only frets on the neck other than the open and 12th that have no sharps or flats.

Those three frets, 0, 10 and 12, I treat as my mental home keys. Think of them like a familiar landmark in case you get a little lost. That wasn’t so bad was it?

Now about that scale. Here it is. We are going to learn it two ways, but there are many ways to play it. I could give you exercises, but you’ll really benefit from looking at the strings and figuring out a couple of new ones yourself.

What is so important about this? I’ll tell you. You may not have learned barre chords yet. But when you do, knowing the location of each note on the sixth string will give you the name and location of every E shaped barre chord.

You want a G major chord? Well, stick that barre finger on the 3rd fret, over the G on the sixth string. Feeling adventurous? Try the 15th fret. Want a D chord? No problem. You know that D is on the tenth fret, strings 1 and 6, so put your index finger there.

What do you do when you see someone playing something you want to play, but you don’t know the chords? Take a look at where the guitarist is forming the chords. After this lesson you should be able to play and identify at least a couple of barre forms. That knowledge, combined with the knowledge of what the root note of the chord is, will have you playing that song in just a few minutes.

With that in mind, here is the other method of playing the same scale, starting with the B note on the A string, fret two.

Why this scale? It will all become clear soon. Trust me. Just go over both of these scale figures as exercises, naming the notes out loud, trying your best not to look at the tab. Instead, use the standard notation as much as possible. What we are striving for is a solid knowledge of the natural notes on the E and A strings.

Think about this: The low E string, fifth fret is the same note as the next string up, played open, correct? E string at the fifth fret is A. So if you know this stuff one way, you know it the other. If you memorized the E string, you already know most of the A string. Heck, you know most of the other strings, too! What am I talking about?

Here is a picture to clarify my rambling:

Notice how the notation is exactly the same in all three examples, but the tab is different.

The following stuff is just meant to jog your mind into seeing relationships on the fretboard. You won’t have time to figure this stuff out while playing, but the insight you gain will help you become more familiar with the fretboard.

From a math perspective, the fifth fret of E is A, and the fifth fret of A is D. Logically it follows that the tenth fret of E is also D. 5+5=10. Follow me? So if you know the notes on the E string from 10 up, you know the notes on the D. If you know the notes on the E string from 5 up, you know the A string.

Take a minute and think about this, and you’ll see the reverse is also true. The 14th fret of the A is B. You know that to get to A on the E string you add 5 frets. So B must be the 19th fret on E, 14+5. In fact, this holds true anywhere on those strings: the distance between two identical notes on the E and A is 5 frets. The same holds true for the A and the D strings. The relationship between E string and D string is 10 frets. Check it out in the notation above.

B is the 19th fret on E, the 14th fret on A, the 9th fret on D, the fourth fret on G and open on B.

And that is the basis for the only exercise for this week. I’d like you to do your own note and scale discovery. Noodle around on the frets and figure out how many different ways you can do the same thing. Keep in mind the important thing: the names of the notes on the tenth fret and the natural notes on the E and A strings.

Here are the rules for the exercises from last week. Remember to refer back to David’s Your Very Own Rosetta Stone if you have questions about the note names on the staff.

1. When you play the exercises say the notes out loud as you pluck the strings. Try to match the pitch of the note. No, you don’t have to sing. No, it doesn’t have to be pretty. Just try to get close.
2. As you say and play the note, visualize where it is on the staff. Get the picture in your head. For instance, low E is below the staff with three ledger lines above it. Low A is just under two ledger lines. If you can imagine the locations you are halfway there.
3. When you tune your guitar before playing, say the notes as you pluck both strings. Try to match the pitch. So you’d pluck the fifth fret of the low E and say, “aaaaaa.” Then you pluck the open A string and say, “aaaaa.”

Play the exercises above for 10 minutes a day.

1. Speed doesn’t count.
2. Say the note as you play. Feel free to drop your voice down an octave at the top. Don’t strain yourself.
3. After you have run through the line once, cover the tab with a blank sheet of paper and keep playing.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Here it is, the big payoff. Don’t cheat now;

go memorize the E and A strings first.

Right. Who can play an open A major chord? How about Am? Can you play an E major chord? Don’t tell me you can play Em too!

So, that’s just four chords, right? Wrong. With the knowledge of the note locations you gained above, you’ve got at least 12 E shaped chords, 12 Em shaped chords, 12 A shaped chords and 12 Am shaped chords.

What on earth do I mean?

I mean you can’t imagine the power of what you have just learned.

This is not optional, in order for this to make sense you must read David’s column But Then Again.

That should both clarify things and amaze you.

Next stop, scales and improvising.

Play well.

Also check out… Fretboard 101 Part 1