How to Learn Guitar Notes on the Neck

How to Learn Guitar Notes on the Neck

Basic guitar lessons often zero in on the most commonly used chords and possibly three or less than five frets. But considering a standard guitar consists of a minimum of nineteen frets, mastering just three would limit your playing, don’t you think? If you want to improve your skills, you need to learn how to play guitar notes on the neck as well.

Revisit the Music Alphabet

Many beginning guitarists survive on tabs or extremely simplified notes alone. But if you want to learn how to play guitar notes on the neck then you have to revisit and fully understand this time how the musical alphabet works.

The good news is that you don’t have 26 letters to memorize for music. Whether you’re playing the guitar, piano, or oboe, the music alphabet will remain the same and consists of letters A to G. Once you reach G, you just go back to A and move all the way up again but this time at a higher pitch.

Frets and Spaces

If you’re familiar with the layout of a typical keyboard and you know which letter represents which key, you should know that there is no black key between letters E and F as well as B and C. When translated for the guitar, this simply means that no “blank” frets exist between those letters. But for everything else, a single fret space will separate two notes.

Applying this knowledge to your music is admittedly tricky at the first try. As mentioned earlier on, E and F aren’t separated by a blank fret. F, as you recall, is played on the first fret of the sixth string. F is then followed by G, and this time there’s a fret space separating them. As such, you will play G on the third fret of your sixth string. After G, you have A next and likewise, you need to skip one fret space. Thus, you play A on the fifth fret of your sixth string.

Finally, you’ve reached all the way to the last or 12^th fret of your sixth string, which means your fingers have reached the double dots often marking the guitar neck. You’ll notice that the note for the last fret is exactly the same note you played on an open string.

Keep these things in mind as you move on to the next string. The cycle will always remain the same. Just be sure you know the note in which you have to start playing your open string (“0” or zero in guitar tablature) and you’ll be fine.

How to Learn Guitar Notes on the Neck

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