To memorize finger board or not..that is the question

[carl365]

Originally Posted by DrBromiAndufEwd

I found myself really regretting not having a solid knowledge of the fret board

i'm going to start dedicating some time to learning the fretboard and hopefully since i've already got the mechanics down, the learning process should be fairly quick...(I HOPE!)

My real trouble is...im really not sure where to start.

Very recently I started learning all the notes. I started with learning the whole notes in the first position and then from the 5th fret to the 12th fret. After you learn that, everything seemed to fall into place automatically. You'll discover the note you want to play is available in a few places and you can pick the handiest note in terms of nearness.

I tried learning all the notes on one string but that didn't work too well for me because I wanted to learn all the notes progressively from the lowest to the highest as I was in the process of learning.

[mr. beaumont]

There's only 12 notes in music:

E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D#

They call that the chromatic scale...you can start on any note...

Each string starts on a different note but continues the pattern. Memorize that chromatic scale and life gets a lot easier.

[Bogie54]

When I decided to learn all the notes on the board many years ago, I found that memorizing only the notes at the fret markers was manageable mentally, and that the rest of them came easily after that.

[Rick Rule]

If you are going to stay in EADGBE for all of your playing, it would seem that memorizing the notes would be a useful tool. If you play, or plan to explore alternate tunings, memorizing all notes would be nearly impossible.

[Raj]

Hi Rick,

I asked a similar question. See Doug's response to my question above.

[usb_chord]

I learned half the fretboard on the bus ride to work over a couple months. The pay off is huge; the investment is miniscule. Not many things in life are like that..

[IainDearg]

Fascinating thread. Interesting that something so academic as learning where the notes are on an instrument should raise so much passion and, occasionally, heckles.

After half-a-century playing guitar I've ended up knowing where all the notes are. It's only because over the years I've wanted to read music so I could learn notated pieces, have been curious about jazz, have wanted to play in all the keys, and wanted to know as many voicings of chords that I could find...

Whether it is useful for any player surely depends on what music that player wants to play. If you want to strum folk songs, then surely it would be a waste of time. If, on the other hand...

[flybynight]

When I was learning, I learned the notes in the first position and then, when I was comfortable with that, I memorized the notes in the C maj and Cm scales at the 8th fret up to the 12th. From there you can sort of suss out the notes in between without too much trouble and then, one day it all kind of fell into place.

If you want versatility, it's good to know the fretboard