notes on the guitar fretboard

Learning the notes on the Fretboard.

It is not necessary to learn all the notes on the fretboard to be a good guitarist. Since I promised not to put a lot of technical stuff on this course I won't start now .

However, it is a good idea to learn some basics, like the names of the open strings, and at least the natural note names on the 6th string. Knowing these note names will help you get to a certain key position quickly.

If you want to be in a band, this will help you properly communicate with other musicians.

For example, if you were to get together with another guitarist or piano player and they say they are going to play a chord progression in the key of A major. You can immediately go to the fifth fret and play a melody or solo with an A major scale along with their progression.

All of what I am talking about in this lesson and very limited throughout this course is known as musical theory.

This is kind of like the difference between knowing how to drive a car and knowing what makes a car run.

You don't need to know how a car works in order to drive it, but it helps to know a little about cars when you talk to your mechanic.

The musical alphabet has 7 letters.
A-B-C-D-E-F-G

However, there are also sharps (#) and Flats (b) for these notes. For example, a half step after the note "F" would be F#. Sharps raise a note by a half step.

If we start with "G" (3rd fret) and go back a half step, we could call that note "Gb" or G flat. Gb and F# are the same note.

One way to think of it is if we go up the neck from first fret to the third fret "G", we can call the note on the second fret "F#".

If we go down the neck from the third fret "G", we could call the note on the second fret "Gb".

Also notice there are no sharps or flats between E & F or B & C.

Confused yet??

Don't worry, it's not that difficult once you understand it.

You would be surprised at how many great guitarist don't even know this stuff, so don't fret. (no pun intended)

If you want to learn more and dig deeper into guitar theory,check out this Guitar Theory crash course.

Congratulations!
By now you should have enough knowledge to be able to play many songs.

The next sections we'll learn about chords, scales and their importance.

Guitar string names & note names on the fretboard.