Why You Should Know Your Notes

Why you should know the notes on the guitar fretboard, is one of the answers you should seek when learning guitar. By learning your notes on each string you step into a much better world of understanding. Your ability to understand how chords & scales are formed. How to alter chords & scales & most importantly, how to communicate your musical ideas.

Make sure to take time to think about these benefits when learning the guitar. The more you know the better you’ll become. The better you become at discovering why you should know your notes on your fretboard the more enjoyable learning guitar will be.

Here are 7 reasons why you should know your notes on the fretboard.

1.) Understand what your playing.

This goes back to what I mentioned above. The better understanding you have of the guitar, the more you can do with it.

2.) Simplifies reading sheet music.

By knowing your notes on the fretboard, you’ll be better at understanding how sheet music for guitar (tablature) is written. In doing so, you’ll discover a whole new world of how things on the guitar work.

3.) Moving chords to other positions.

Knowing your notes & understanding chord forms & scale patterns, you’ll be able to find where you might be able to play something easier in a different position. This is why you see people play things differently. Because by knowing your notes on the fretboard, you can do that.

4.) Improve improvisation.

Being able to fully express yourself on the guitar is what it’s all about & improvising can be made much easier by knowing the notes on your fretboard. It gives you a road map on where to go.

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5.) Open up creative possibilities.

This is important if you want to write your own songs. Now you can just fumble around until something sounds good, or you can do it the professional way & learn your notes. The latter will serve you much better.

6.) Apply concepts from knowing the theory.

Of course, you need to learn some music theory first, but once you did (let me know if I can help in this area) you’d be able to come up with some interesting concepts by knowing your notes on the guitar fretboard.

7.) Improve communication with other musicians.

This is vitally important if you want to play in any type of band or ensemble. Communicating your ideas to others is not always easy. But taking the time to learn your notes & real understand the fretboard, will allow you to do this task much easier.

So there you have it. 7 reasons to know your notes on the guitar fretboard. Let’s look at the diagram below to get you started. But first, we must know our musical alphabet.

A-A#-B-C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G# As you can see there is no H I J etc. Just A-G with sharps (#) in between except for two. Can you see which ones they are??

Once that’s done, take a look at the fretboard diagram & see how this alphabet works on every string.

Make sure to memorize this. It will really help you out in the long run. If more help is needed, make sure to grab my free action-guide on how to memorize the fretboard quickly.

And as always, If you have any questions, be sure to let me know and I’ll be sure to guide you in the right direction.

Until our next guitar lesson, take care.

Dwayne Jenkins

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