Many people who are learning how to play the guitar do it by visualizing the fretboard and memorizing various patterns. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but one important (even essential) aspect of playing an instrument gets neglected if we only focus on the visually detectable patterns — being aware what notes is one playing. Why is that important?
A note played on the guitar belongs to some family of notes. It could be a member of the family we call major tonality, or family we call minor tonality, or family we call dominant tonality, and so forth. If we don’t know what tonality is currently being played, we won’t know which notes fit and which don’t fit into that family.
A lot of people who are learning the guitar neglect that part of music. I met people who have been playing guitar for years, even decades, who have no idea what notes are they playing. Even those who do understand the relationship between notes and the underlying harmonic structure, often cannot find any particular note on the guitar fretboard. This lesson is for those who would like to take their musicianship to the next level and finally master the fretboard.
To make things easier, I propose we start by focusing on the so-called “white key notes”. Meaning, focusing on the natural notes (i.e., no flats or sharps for now). We call those natural notes “white key notes” because they are found by pressing the white keys on the piano. So, for now, let’s ignore the “black key notes” (the ones found on the black keys on the piano); those are the sharp and flat notes. Once we solidify our knowledge of the natural notes on the guitar, it will be easy to expand our grasp by including the sharp and the flat notes (hint: those sharp/flat notes are always only one fret above or one fret below the natural notes).
The best way to start on that journey is to limit ourselves to the tonality of C. Sticking to the diatonic system, we can learn the C major scale and then figure out the C major arpeggio (consisting of the root note C, major third interval E, and fifth interval G). Then, sticking to the C major scale, we learn how to play arpeggios for all triads that are found in the C major scale: D minor triad, E minor triad, F major triad, G major triad, A minor triad, B diminished triad, and C major triad one octave higher.
As we’re playing those arpeggios, we should say out loud the names of each note, as we fret them on the guitar. Doing that repeatedly will eventually cement our knowledge of the natural notes on the fretboard.
See you next time, when we expand our basic knowledge of the fretboard by learning how to play more advanced arpeggios on the guitar.
Happy fretboarding!
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