The Importance Of..........Knowing Your Fretboard

This installment of "The Importance Of" is about the importance of knowing your fretboard notes. It does any bass or guitar player good to know where any note is at any given time. Knowing the notes helps you find chords when you want and find the root notes of any scale you want. Its also a big plus to know where everything is at when it is time to rip a solo. When you first look at a guitar or bass it can be over whelming looking at all the frets and strings and wondering how many notes you have to learn. In all reality there really isn't much to learn. If you are good at picking up patterns it's especially a breeze! To help you learn them lets get a couple ground rules first. The first one is knowing that the musical alphabet goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Once you get to G it all starts back over at A. What you wind up with is a constant cycle of ABCDEFGABCDEFGABCDEFG. The second rule is every note is a whole step away from every other note except for two notes - E to Fand B to C are half steps (reminder- half step is going up or down 1 fret, whole step is going up or down 2 frets). The third thing is know the name of your strings - (6)low E, (5)A, (4)D, (3)G, (2)B and (1) high E. Knowing our rules you can go up each string without even having a chart.We are going to do natural notes only, meaning NO sharps (#) or flats (b). For both E strings you start out with the open E, go a 1\2 step to the first fret for F, whole step G, whole step A, whole step B, half step C, whole step D and a whole step to the 12th fret to bring you back to E. On your 5th or A string you start out with open A, whole step to 2nd fret B, half step C, whole step D, whole step E, half step F, whole step G, and whole step to A. Your D or 5th string, open D, whole E, half F, whole G, whole A, whole B, half C, whole back to D. The 3rd or G string, open G, whole A, whole B,half C, whole D, whole E, half F and whole G. Your 2nd or Bstring is open B, half C, whole D, whole E, half F, whole G, whole A and whole back to B. We only go to our 12th fret because once you get it down up to your 12th fret you realize its the same from the 12th fret upwards as it was from open to your 12th fret. I am including a fret board diagram in this. It goes along with what we just went over. I have had students get the fret board down by doing what we just did and others get it down by using the diagram and still others by just memorizing what I say in lessons. Any way that works for you is the best way. As long as you get it down it does not matter how you do it or how long it takes you. Learn it front wards,back wards across and any which way you can. It is a very very valuable piece of knowledge and it crucial to becoming a guitar master.To see the fretboard diagram bigger just click on the picture and it will blow up to full screen size.Also for the 4 string bass guitar just get rid of the high E and the B string andthe string numbers change to E-4, A-3, D-2, G-1st string. Hope you get the fret board down and realize "The Importance of Knowing Your Fretboard!"