Learning The Notes of the Guitar Neck

In this lesson on the guitar fretboard we talk about how to find any note on the neck of the guitar. We will go over exactly how to find any note, and I’ll share some strategies for how to start memorizing the notes on the fretboard.

The most important things to take away from this video is the names of the open strings on guitar – EADGBE, the musical alphabet – ABCDEFG, and the spaces between the notes.

One easy way to remember the string names is with a mnemonic. “Even Average Dogs Get Bones Eventually” is one, but we go over a few in the video.

The first thing to know is that there are sharp notes or flat notes between some of the notes, and other notes have no space.

There is no space between E and F, and there is no space between B and C. All of the other notes will have one note between them, and it will be a sharp or flat note.

Sharps and flats represent the exact same tone, but the name can change depending on what key you are in. As a beginner, it’s easiest to remember that one fret lower on the guitar is flat, and one fret higher on the guitar is sharp.

One way to begin to learn the fretboard is to memorize small groupings of notes

BCD – EFG
EFG

Another way to learn the notes on the guitar is to recognize the visual pattern of the location of a note.

What are Notes on Guitar?

In this lesson we will talk about what a note is on guitar. A note is a symbol for a pitch, and a pitch is literally a sound wave.

A note is a symbol that represents a pitch. A note can be a music note on a staff, a key on the piano, or a string or fret position on the guitar neck.

This lesson only discusses the most basic ideas you need to know about notes on the guitar, and in the next lesson we will go into more detail about memorizing the notes.

Here are the notes on a guitar neck:

Here are notes on a piano:

The open strings on guitar are EADGBE from largest to smallest:

The notes up the Big E string Start on E and work their way up. Open notes on the guitar repeat at the 12th fret