Five Tips on Learning Guitar Notes

To find your way around the fretboard of the guitar is very important. It will help you in guitar improvisation, sight-reading, 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. I will show you several exercises which will help you memorize guitar notes, but you will have to work at it on your own time as well.

So, let's begin with the fretboard itself.

Guitar Notes Tip 1

Learn the basic notes, the notes of a C major scale on every string. Let's see the first string on your guitar (high E string). The first note is an E. You will find F on the first fret. G on fret three, and so on. 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:

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

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

Guitar Notes Tip 2

Learn a specific note on all strings.  Let's use the note G.  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

Try this with other notes too. For example E.

Guitar Notes Tip 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 Notes Tip 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 Notes Tip 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.

Hope these help, be sure to check out our video guitar lesson on guitar Notes.