There comes a time when you are looking at your guitar and thinking there are so many notes on this thing and I don't know what they are but I know I need to learn! Well, you are in luck as this article goes over exactly that!
In this article, we will go over the following methods on how to practice finding your notes.
So here are some really cool tips in order to help you find your notes a lot quicker than before.
Let's start with the first topic:
What`s Past The 12th Fret?
You maybe wondering what's with the title of this topic? Well, I will tell you. The good news is that it's a very simple concept.
All the notes that exist on your fretboard before the 12th fret just get repeated again past the 12th fret like a mirror.
For example
Example 1
The 1st fret on the Low E string (the thick one) is an F note and if we look at Example 1 we can see that the 13th fret (12 frets higher) is an F too just an octave higher.
This is the same with every fret on the fretboard and even the open strings.
It's really simple if you go past the 12th fret the fretboard just repeats itself.
Another simple concept to understand is:
The Two E Strings
When we are using standard tuning you can easily notice that we have two E strings. In Example 2
We can see that the notes on both E strings are the same which makes it easy to understand that two strings have the same notes which is 2 out of 6 strings if you learn one of the strings you learn both of them at the same time.
It can be an obvious observation but when you actually view it this way it helps with the workload of understanding where your notes are.
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Finding Your Notes Vertically
Let's look at how we can find your notes vertically from low notes to high notes on the fretboard. This is a decent way to practice where the same note is as the pattern is the same distance every time you pick a new note. If we look at Example 3:
It shows how we can locate the distance from one note to the next same note across all 6 strings and because we have two strings that are the same as mentioned before we only need to learn 5 strings.
The Octave Method Going Towards The Bridge
One method I use quite frequently is finding the octaves across strings going diagonally towards the bridge. In Example 4
It shows that we can get the same note but an octave higher if we skip A string and go up two frets this pattern continues but we have to accommodate for the B string which shifts an extra fret up so we have to go up by 3 frets to find the next octave.
Using Caged Octaves
Lastly, my favourite method is using caged octaves because I use the caged system extensively its a good vehicle to understanding your root notes. Just a brief summary of the caged system If we make the barre shapes C A G E D across the fretboard we can cover all the areas of the fretboard pretty quickly. Yet we are only looking for the same note so we can learn the notes faster. With Example 5
It shows where you can find each note thats the same within the caged shapes across the fretboard.
I find this to be the most useful method as it is related to chord shapes and it helps link these shapes together and it helps start new chords faster from knowing this pattern.
These are my top tips to finding the same note across the fretboard I hope this was useful in helping you understand how to find notes in different ways.
