The Fretboard & Theory Quick-Start

Do you have trouble learning the notes on the fretboard? Most players do. At some point every guitarist is faced with a decision: either learn the neck and progress to the next level, or say "nah, it's too hard" and make up some excuse why you don't need it.

Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of the latter.

It's obvious to any honest guitar player why learning the notes on the neck is a huge advantage. If you ever want to break out of playing the same licks and the same pentatonic patterns, you're going to need to see the notes on the neck and instantly recognize their names.

Today is the day you begin to do exactly that.

The Musical Alphabet

To start, you must understand the musical alphabet. This is essentially every note that exists in music, and believe it or not, there are only 12 of them.

Think of your guitar. The open 6th string is E, and the 6th string 12th fret is also E. Starting on the open string and going fret by fret, you will have played every note in the alphabet before landing back on E at the 12th fret, where the cycle starts again.

To simplify this even more, there are only 7 letter names for all 12 notes: A B C D E F G. After G it starts back over at A.

"But you just said there are 12 notes, and here you are listing only 7." The interesting part is that there is a note between almost every letter. For example, there is a note between A and B, and it can be called by two different names: A♯ or B♭. The reason for the two names is a real question with a real answer, and it's covered in Chapter 5. For now, just recognize that both names point to the same fret.

The tricky part is that there are two spots in the alphabet with no note in between. There is no note between B and C, and no note between E and F. All the others will have a note in between.

The Fastest Way In: Octaves

So how do you actually learn the notes on the fretboard? The fastest way is to memorize octaves.

An octave is simply the distance from one note to that same letter note, either up or down 12 half steps. The open E string and the 12th fret E is one example. On guitar, octaves don't simply happen on one string like that. They can happen by skipping one or more strings, and that's what makes them so useful.

Play a C chord. Your ring finger is on the 5th string, 3rd fret, which is the note C. Your index finger is on the 2nd string, 1st fret, which is also C, one octave higher. Let go of your middle finger and leave only your ring and index finger, and you're left with one shape of an octave.

There are several octave shapes, but they often repeat themselves on different strings. That makes learning the shapes incredibly quick, which in turn makes learning the notes on the neck quick. Learn the 6th and 5th strings by heart, and you can reach every other string on the guitar from those two alone. The 1st string is a bonus you get for free: it's tuned to E just like the 6th, so the notes fall on the exact same frets.

Reference Points

Octaves are the fastest way in. Reference points are how you get real depth.

A reference point is simply a note on the guitar that you know by heart and can locate any time. From there you can figure out another nearby note using the first one as a reference. You already know one set: the open strings, E A D G B E. And you already know a second, because the 12th fret is the open strings one octave higher, same notes, same order.

Here are the two sets most players never think about.

Now look at what you've got: the open strings, the 5th fret, the 7th fret, and the 12th fret, across all six strings. That's four anchors spread over the whole neck, and everything else sits between them. There's no part of the neck where you're more than a couple of frets away from something you already know.

Two More Things That Speed This Up

Count from the nearest note you have memorized. The open 6th string is E, so the 6th string 2nd fret must be F♯. You don't need that fret memorized. You just need to count up from one you do.

Take a lick you like and play it in every octave. Learn the actual note names in it, then find those same notes elsewhere on the neck and play the lick there. You build fretboard familiarity and get something musical out of it at the same time.

Start with the musical alphabet, then the octave shapes from the 6th and 5th strings, then the reference points. That combination will get you most of the way to knowing the fretboard.

In the last chapter you learned what the notes are and how to find them. Now we deal with what happens between them.

If music theory has ever intimidated you to the point where you couldn't figure out where to even start, this is the place. And if you're someone who wants to find new ways of playing chords, or wants to build your own chord shapes instead of looking them up, this chapter is going to do a lot of work for you.

What an Interval Is

An interval is merely the distance between two notes. When I say distance, think of it in terms of half steps and whole steps. A half step is one fret on the guitar, or one key on a piano.

Move from the 5th fret to the 6th fret on one string and you have moved a half step. Go from the 5th fret to the 7th fret instead and you have moved a whole step. Simple, right?

The smallest interval possible is a half step. On piano, guitar, or any other instrument in Western music, that's the smallest distance between two notes. After all, there is no note between C and C♯.

The Names

Intervals have names. We're going to limit ourselves to intervals within one octave here, though since they're just distances between two notes, they can theoretically be infinitely large.

The lowercase "m" stands for minor and the uppercase "M" stands for major. These aren't chords. These are names of the intervals. And notice that each minor interval is a half step smaller than its major partner.

Take a look at m2 and M2. A m2 is a "minor second" and is one half step. A M2 is a "major second" and is one whole step. So starting on the note C, a m2 gives you C♯, and a M2 gives you D. The same relationship holds for every other minor and major pair in the table.

The Perfect Intervals

The Perfect intervals are interesting and quite important. They're called "perfect" for two reasons.

One: whether you're in a major key or a minor key with the same root note, A major or A minor for example, the Perfect intervals will be the same note. Two: they're the least dissonant intervals. Their waveforms line up either exactly or nearly exactly when both notes are played together.

Take the Perfect 5th (P5) in the context of A minor. Play an A minor chord and look at the high E string. It's part of the chord, right? Now play an A major chord. That high E is in that chord too. The 5th note of the A minor scale is E, and the 5th note of the A major scale is also E. Hence the name.

The Tritone

The tritone only appears once on the list, and it's a strange one. It's among the most dissonant intervals there is. Somewhere along the way it picked up the nickname diabolus in musica, the devil in music. Play one and you'll understand why they bothered naming it at all.

So How Is This Useful?

Here's where it pays off. This simplifies chord construction down to nothing but intervals. There's a recipe for building a major chord, a different one for a minor chord, and a bonus one for a diminished chord.

Major, minor, and diminished are all the chord types you'll find within any key. Understand these three recipes and you can build every chord in every key without looking up a single shape. Pick a root note, run the recipe, and find the notes on the neck using what you learned in Chapter 1.