Category: Music Notes

To study the guitar fretboard you will need a guitar fretboard chart. With the chart in front of you the notes can be seen, relationships can be formed in the form of scales and chords. Take some time finding chords at different positions on the guitar fretboard. You do not have to play them, only find the shapes on the fretboard chart. It is like a game - see how many C major chords you can find. Here is another guitar fretboard chart which will help you see the individual notes in various positions.

The aim of studying a guitar fretboard chart is so you can, after a while, get rid of it but first you must establish your own personal relationship with it. Get a basic feel for the guitar fretboard. If you are just a beginner guitar player, you cannot expect it to mean too much to you yet, but you can begin by finding chords you are learning at the moment in a some positions on the guitar. You can find the names of the notes in the chords and write them down in alphabetical order and find them on the guitar in the form of scales. Do not take this exercise beyond what your fingers can do comfortably. If you are getting tired or your fingers start to ache, do something less demanding.

I am including a link to a chord generator which should help you to learn the guitar fretboard.

If you experiment with the basic chords and scales on the guitar fretboard, after a day or two you will know the names of the notes in a few positions. Do not be distracted by the fact that there are still many places on the fretboard where you DO NOT know the names of the notes. As your knowledge and your interest in playing music grows, so will your knowledge of the guitar fretboard. Do not confuse getting to know the guitar in this way with memorizing the notes. Finding interesting ways to play chords and scales gets your body moving and it gets your feelings working, which helps your mind remember where the notes are. We can look now at how learning notes off by heart can help in becoming a guitarist.

The open string sequence of E A D G B E is the same at the twelfth fret. So once you know the notes up to the twelfth fret, you automatically know all the notes above it. Good to know. Another tool to help you get to know the guitar is to memorize the notes at the fifth fret - A D G C E A. So without even working on chords and scales you have already somewhat simplified the layout of the guitar fretboard. You really do not need to remember too much more at this stage.

Finally, to remind ourselves that there learning can be done in many ways, let us see how guitarists from different disciplines learn the guitar fretboard. If you are aiming to become a rock or jazz guitar player, learning the notes on the guitar is said to be one of the main things you need to achieve, but did you know that classical and Flamenco guitar players approach learning the guitar without even thinking about learning the fretboard?

The traditional way of learning Flamenco is by learning from a family member or a friend, and only trying to compose your own material after getting a great deal of music from other guitarists. And you might find it hard to believe but improvisation is not a traditional part of Flamenco guitar playing. Yet, after a few years of learning by playing guitar with friends and family, Flamenco guitar players get an instinctive feel for the guitar which is as solid as that of any guitarist who has learnt to read music or tab.

Classical guitar players learn how to read music first, then learn simple pieces, and graduate to more difficult music as their knowledge and technique grows. So although they never need to work directly on learning the fretboard, and usually they never try to improvise, they eventually become accomplished guitarists through gaining a repertoire.

So do not stress over learning the guitar fretboard, your knowledge of the notes will grow as your confidence as a guitar player grows.

Technorati Tags: guitar fretboard, guitar fretboard chart, chord generator

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Everybody who picks up a guitar and dreams of learning how to play it must wonder what it would be like to have total command over the guitar fretboard. The flexibility of being able to play the guitar as well as you can hum or whistle. You may never actually achieve that aim but it is a worthwhile pursuit and will yield results.

Unless you have knowledge of the notes on the guitar fretboard it will be very difficult for you to learn how to improvise. A guitarist needs to know where he is putting his fingers and why he is doing it. When you start to learn a new piece you can immediately begin to put your stamp on it. Also you will find that you can transpose any riff or song to any key to suit other musicians you find yourself working with.

In reality many guitarists are totally at sea as far as memorizing the guitar fretboard. Many learn the notes in the first position and go no further. The reason for this is that learning the notes seems to be difficult. But is it true? Well, it is true if you are learning the piano once you know the notes in one octave you know them all. If you learn a tune in one position, you can transpose it to another. Can we find repetitive patterns on the guitar fretboard?

We can impose patterns on the fretboard by choosing a scale and finding the notes in all positions. A slightly simpler way to begin is to just choose one note, for instance C. If you find the note C wherever it occurs on the sixth string, then go ahead and locate it on the other strings. You do not need to attempt to commit the notes to memory, just find them and play them. Do it for a few minutes during your guitar practice, and after a few days you will find your memory of where the notes are located is gradually improving.

Further improvement in your familiarity with the guitar fretboard will depend on your ability to think up new challenges for yourself. For instance you could take the E major chord, learn the names of the notes that make up the chord, and without referring to a chord chart, find where you can play the notes together further up the neck.

Technorati Tags: guitar fretboard, memorizing the guitar fretboard

If you are learning guitar you have probably heard about tablature, or tabs. As a new guitar player you are anxious to start playing songs, and you have been told that tabs are the easiest way to learn. That is good news. You do not need to spend weeks or months learning music theory.
Guitar tablature is a system of musical notation which is very popular with guitarists. With guitar tabs a composer can express most musical ideas on the acoustic or electric guitar in a clear, straightforward way.
If you want to start playing guitar right away, grab the tabs for your favorite song and take a look at what the tab consists of:

E—3——————

B———————-

G———————-

D———————-

A———————-

E———————-

You will probably believe me when I tell you that the tab is a representation of the neck of the guitar. You find out which frets to put your fingers at by following the numbers printed along the strings. If there is a number 3 on the top string, that means you put your finger at the third fret on the top E string - the thinnest string on the guitar. You have just played the note G. No problem. The guitar is your oyster.

Now let us move onto tabs for guitar chords. Here is an E Major chord:

E—0——————-

B—0——————-

G—1——————-

D—2——————-

A—2——————-

E—0——————-

Just for comparison, if you take a look at the sheet music for the same song you will be presented with a bunch of black dots that do not do a thing to help you play the song. The language of sheet music is not as simple as tab language. There is a whole background of musical theory behind the little black dots on the page. Learning theory takes time and effort, and unless you see some way you will benefit from learning music it is just going to clutter up your brain with useless furniture.

Guitar tabs fast track your learning of songs, but there is one condition: you must already know what these songs sound like. You see, there are some elements missing from tabs that are present in conventional sheet music. Tabs do not give you a time signature or note values. Basically that means you can play the notes but, without hearing the song played by somebody else, you will not know how long each note lasts. But the chances are when you are starting out learning to play guitar you will probably be wanting to play songs you have heard before.

Tabs are available on the internet for acoustic, bass or electric guitars. If you plan on playing guitar with a group of other musicians, you might encounter some problems sharing your guitar tabs with them unless they are also guitar players. If you work with a keyboard player he or she probably learnt to read music as part of their keyboard playing course, and they may not be able to make head or tail out of your guitar tab.

So there are some faults with relying exclusively on tabs to learn songs but if you work at learning your guitar tabs you will find that you will be able to play guitar just as well as a guitarist with a knowledge of musical notation.

Technorati Tags: Guitar tablature, guitar tabs