Guitar Lesson: Five Ways To Learn The Notes On The Guitar

By: Peter Edvinsson

To find your way around the fretboard of the guitar is very
important. It will help you in guitar improvisation, sight
reading, and in understanding chords and more. In this guitar
lesson we will explore five ways to learn the notes on the
guitar fretboard.

How much do you need to practice?

A couple of minutes a day with one of these exercises will help
you improve your skills in finding the notes. In this guitar
lesson we will focus on the fretboard and not the actual guitar
sheet music.

Learning to read guitar sheet music will be much easier when you
master the notes on the guitar keyboard. I have divided this
article in five lessons that you can alternate between until you
master the guitar fretboard.

Guitar lesson 1

Learn the basic notes, the notes of a C major scale (the white
keys on the piano) on every string. Let's test this on the first
string on your guitar. The first note is an E. You will find F
on the first fret. G on fret three. A on fret five. B on fret
seven. C on fret eight, D on fret ten and the next E on fret
twelve.

The sixth string on the guitar is an E too. It's just two
octaves lower but you will find the same note names on this
string on the same frets two octaves lower.

On the second string you will find the notes on the following
frets:

fret 0-B, 1-C, 3-D, 5-E, 6-F, 8-G, 10-A, 12-B

On the third guitar string you'll find the following notes:

0-G, 2-A, 4-B, 5-C, 7-D, 9-E,10-F, 12-G

I guess you can figure out the names of the notes on the next
strings by yourself but here they are in case you will double
check. The fourth string:

0-D, 2-E, 3-F, 5-G, 7-A, 9-B, 10-C, 12-D

The notes on the fifth string or the A-string:

0-A, 2-B, 3-C, 5-D, 7-E, 8-F, 10-G, 12-A

I would suggest that you concentrate on one string at a time and
learn the names as you play the notes on your guitar maybe by
saying the note names aloud as you play.

Guitar lesson 2

Learn a specific note on all strings. This is a great way to
learn the notes and quite amusing too. Let's use the note G.
You'll find it on the third fret on string six. Where can you
find the note G on string five? Right, on fret 10.

The G notes on the strings from the sixth string to the first
are on the following frets:

3 10 5 0 8 3

You can make an exercise of this by playing the G notes from
string six down to the first string and back again. Try this
with other notes too. For example E.

If you devote a couple of minutes a day on this exercise you
will soon be able to play the sequence of strings fast, spotting
the notes without effort.

Guitar lesson 3

Learn the names of the notes on a fret. We can start with the
open strings starting from the sixth string to the first. The
names will be:

E A D G B E

Now, play the notes on the third fret in the same order. At the
same time try to say the names of the notes aloud. I will help
you this time only by writing the note names down:

G C F Bb D G

Try this exercise on different frets and say the names of the
notes aloud.

Guitar lesson 4

Learn the notes in a chord. Play any chord and name the notes
aloud from string six to string one. This guitar exercise will
also help you to understand how the chords are built.

Guitar lesson 5

In this guitar lesson you will use your ability to create random
notes on the guitar. As you play notes on your guitar at random
you also say the note names aloud.

Play in an even pace, just fast enough to make this exercise a
challenge for your mind so your mind will concentrate on the
task and not wander off.

All of these small guitar lessons can be used together with a
companion. One playing the notes on the guitar and the other
saying the note names.

As I mentioned before I think it's best not to overdo these
exercises. Choose one of the guitar lessons and work a couple of
minutes a day on mastering the exercise.

About the author:
Peter Edvinsson is a musician, composer and music teacher. Visit
his site Capotasto Music with free guitar sheet music
and his free sheet
music blog