Knowing the fretboard

gingerbbm

How well do you know the notes from frets 1 to 12? For years, for me it's been the E and A strings, and up to around fret 5 on the others. To remedy this I've made a web app that prompts me to play every note on every string to a click, and it's an exercise I do every time I pick up the guitar. Takes a minute or two and then I can get on with my playing.

http://gingerbbm.com/knowtheboard

Check it out - I'm open to ideas on how to improve it and would like to hear how you get on with it. And if you already know the board, how did you learn it?

viz

Does it work on an iphone?

gingerbbm

That's what I use it on 

viz

Ah I didn't understand what to do! Sorry. I was trying to press the buttons on the iphone screen instead of playing an instrument!

gingerbbm

Yes it's not immediately apparent how it works but actually there isn't much interaction: just hit Start and play the note that's green. 

ben_wuh

This is great, and aside from being very useful, it's exposed how poor my knowledge of the fretboard is.

earwighoney

I use this site 
http://all-guitar-chords.com/guitar_scales.php

and I spent a fair time making hand drawn tabs of 6 strings for different scales, modes, tunings.  Time consuming on many accounts but I found it to be a lot of good for my dexterity and memory.  

LeeCassidy

I'm not much of a nazi about many things on the guitar, but I really think everyone should aim to know their way around the fretboard. You should be able to say what note is at any given fret on a given string with virtually no delay. 

How I learnt this? My familiarity with it just grew naturally as I played. There are so many oft-used frets all over the place, you can't help but start to develop a sort of 'landmark' approach at first, and from there, filling in the gaps just happens. I didn't memorise a diagram or anything, but whatever helps you is worth doing.

I suppose if you're never thinking about the fretboard as notes, but instead see it as fret positions  (the 7th fret on the A string to me is thought of as an 'E', but I suppose to some it could be just 'the 7th fret on the A string'), that might not happen. To those people, I'd strongly urge you start to think of it in terms of notes. It'll completely demystify the fretboard, and as you're going to be spending so much of your time there, it seems odd to not get to know what can essentially effortlessly become known.

It's a bit like the agent Steve Murphy in Narcos. He spent all that time in Colombia and didn't learn Spanish. No esta bien!