The Notes on the Guitar Fretboard
Seventy-two places, twelve names, and a handful of shapes that connect them.
Six strings, twelve frets before it all repeats, and seventy-two places for twelve notes. Nobody learns the fretboard by memorising seventy-two things. You learn it by knowing a handful of facts and the shapes that connect them, and then the neck fills itself in. Here is every note on a guitar, named; the figure follows the text, and tapping any note plays it.
Six strings, one alphabet
The open strings, low to high, are E, A, D, G, B, E. Each fret is one semitone, so the twelve notes of the chromatic scale run up every string in the same order — E, F, F♯, G, G♯, A … — and at the twelfth fret you are back where you started, an octave up. Everything above the twelfth fret is the first twelve frets again. That is fact one: you only have to learn half the neck.
One note, everywhere
Here is every C on the neck. Notice that there are only a few, and that they are not scattered: they sit in pairs and triples that are the same distance apart everywhere. Now every A, then every E: the same constellation, moved. Knowing where one note lives means knowing where every note lives, because the pattern doesn't change.
The octave shapes
Two shapes connect a note to its octave. From the low E or A string, go two strings up and two frets up — the same note, an octave higher. From the D or G string, it is two strings up and three frets up, because the B string is tuned a third higher instead of a fourth and everything crossing it shifts by one fret. Those two shapes, and the fact that the two E strings are the same note two octaves apart, are how you get from any note you know to every other place it appears. Every G shows both: the third fret on the low E, the fifth on the D, the twelfth on the G, the eighth on the B, the third on the high E.
The landmarks
Fret 5 on any string is the next string's open note (except the G string, where it is fret 4). Fret 7 is the previous string's octave (fret 8 on the B string, for the same reason). Fret 12 is the open string. The fifth and seventh frets are marked on almost every guitar for exactly this reason: they are the places where one string's names line up with another's. Learn the notes on the low E and A strings first — they are the roots of every barre chord — and the fifth-fret rule gives you the D and G strings for free.
A key at a time
The other way in is to stop looking at twelve notes and look at seven. Here is C major: no sharps or flats, so every note you see is a plain letter. Then G major, one sharp; then D major, two. A scale on the neck is a pattern, and inside the pattern the names come easily, because there are only seven of them and you know which they are before you look.
What NoSheet does instead
The app doesn't ask you for note names much. It labels the neck by degree — where a note sits relative to the root — because that is what you hear: a phrase in A minor and the same phrase in D minor sound like the same phrase, and the degrees say so while the names don't. Names matter when you talk to other musicians and read a chart; degrees matter when you play by ear. Learn the landmarks above so you can find a root; then let the exercises teach the rest of the neck as distances from it.
Questions
- What are the notes on a guitar's open strings?
- Low to high: E, A, D, G, B, E. Every fret raises a string by a semitone, and the twelfth fret is the open note an octave up.
- What is the fastest way to learn the fretboard?
- Learn the low E and A strings first — they carry the roots of the barre chords — then use the octave shapes (two strings up, two frets up from the E and A strings; three frets up from the D and G) to find every other place a note lives. Knowing where one note is everywhere means knowing the pattern for all twelve.
- Why is the B string different?
- The strings are tuned in fourths except G to B, which is a major third. Any shape that crosses from the G string to the B string shifts up one fret to compensate — the octave shape included.
- Do I need to know the note names to play by ear?
- Not to play — the ear works in distances from a root, which is why NoSheet labels the neck by degree. You need the names to find a root, read a chart and talk to other musicians; the landmarks on this page are enough for that.