Importance Of Knowing Your Fretboard
I was giving guitar lessons the other day in Danville & San Ramon CA. I had my students working out with fretboard exeercises because before you are ready to start jamming with other musicians, you should really know your guitar fretboard inside out, every fret including sharps and flats.
Guitar Lesson – Fretboard
Let’s begin with the 6 string guitar standard E tuning (String 6 to 1 or bottom to top in pitch are E, A, D, G, B and E ).
First, let’s review your guitar lessons on basic music theory:
The musical alphabet is the first 7 letters of the English alphabet (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) and a whole step is the distance of two frets on the guitar. A half step is the distance of 1 fret between two consecutive musical notes. Example of a whole step is F to g and a half step is F to F Sharp or B to c (natural half step).
There are only two instances where there are “natural half steps”. Lets use common phrases to help remember what are called “natural half steps”. B to C is one of these which you can remember by the acronym used in calendar dates (B.C. which stands for “Before Christ”). The other natural half step is E to F which you can remember by the word EFFORT where the first two letters are e to f.
To master the fretboard, practice the following guitar lesson exercise:
Start on lowest string 6, the open E and say out loud as you play on guitar E open, F1 meaning fret 1, G3, A5, B7, C8, D10 and finally E12 and stop there because it is one octave above the starting note. Then proceed to do the same exercises on all remaining strings.
These simple little exercises when practiced consistently will produce amazing results in learning the fretboard.
If you are looking for a guitar instructor in Danville or San Ramon CA who can create a step by step lesson plan that maximizes your practice time and gets you to the next level as quickly as possible, contact me and I will give you a free guitar lesson that will convince you that it’s just a matter of time before you will be performing and jamming with other musicians.