7 Reasons to Master the Notes of You Guitar

As many frustrated guitarists have figured out, the guitar was not designed to make learning the notes of music easy. Even for more advanced players, the notes on the fretboard seem to be placed in a completely random order. Despite the difficulties, it is important that you learn to identify where the notes are on your guitar in order to grow both as a guitarist and more importantly, as a musician.

Here are 7 reasons why you should master the notes of your fretboard:

1. Working With Other Musicians

Have you ever had to communicate with someone who can’t speak s English very well? They may still be learning the language or just don’t have a good grasp of it yet. Trying to express the simplest of ideas can be very difficult. Their sentences are broken, words are used in incorrectly, and they even struggle to understand what you are trying to say.

Musicians speak in their own language and that language is built on the notes. By learning the notes of your guitar, you will be better equipped to communicate with the other musicians that you play with. This makes the process of working together much more enjoyable for everyone and you will find that the material you produce will improve in quality.

2. Sight Reading Musical Notation

Reading standard notation is a nightmare for many guitar players and by learning the notes of the fretboard you can make it much easier. It will start to make sense how the little dots on the page relate to your strings and frets. The name of the note s on the page will line-up with the note of the same name you are playing on your guitar. This allows you to think less about reading and focus more on playing.

3. Understand What You Play

By being aware of the notes of your guitar you will start to notice patterns that start to appear in things that you play. This, in turn, will help to the music to make sense and opens up ideas about how different musical ideas work together. Chords, riffs, licks, and shapes that you use will start to have more meaning behind them. This allows you to easily work with new songs and can even make memorizing new tunes easier.

4. Improve Your Improvisation

Knowing the notes of your guitar can be critical if you want to be a great improviser. Key change and strange chords often cause problems for guitarists who improvise using one scale pattern or a handful of licks. This can be avoided if you know where your notes are on the fretboard because you can just follow the chord changes or keys instead of relying on one pattern or set of licks.

You will also be opened up to understanding the notes that you play and how they fit against the chords. Relationships that exist between a given note and a chord and the effect that it has on the sound of your solo will start to make sense and will allow you decide the direction of your solo.

5. Change Parts, Move them Somewhere Else

A single note can be played in multiple places on the fretboard of the guitar and this causes no end of headaches for many guitarists. As an example, the fretboard diagram below shows various places to play one E note across the fretboard: we start with the open 1st string and move down across each string one at a time. There are as many as 6 different places where this note may be played on a 24 fret guitar.

This type of situation will cause a lot of problems if you don’t know the notes of the guitar as there doesn’t seem to be any relationship between the different locations. However, this can be turned into a huge advantage when you do know your notes. Here’s how…

If you are having trouble with the fingering for that difficult solo, then you can just change it and move the notes to a different position; where the fingering is easier. The guitar is one of the only instruments where you can try different ways of playing the same part. If something is challenging to play in one position, you can just move it to lots of other positions to try and make it a little easier. However, if a piano player runs into a challenging part, he can’t move it to make it easier. He is stuck with the fingering and must work it out no matter how hard it is. The guitar, on the other hand, works in a way that you make changes to parts to try and make them easier, but you can only do this if you know of your notes.

6. Make Sense of Music Theory

Let’s be honest… most guitarists hate learning music theory. This is because they are never really sure how to use the ideas that they learn with the guitar. If you can’t use it, why even learn it in the first place? When you know the notes on your guitar, you will open up a way of using music theory on your guitar. You could create new lines, licks, patterns, and even entire songs or solos. Music theory is no longer a chore but will let you gather a bunch of new tools for playing and writing. You can explore amazing new sounds and ideas on your guitar.

7. Improve Your Writing

Being aware of your notes will open you up to a world of possibilities that you probably didn’t know existed. This works not just for composition, but for improvised ideas too. You won’t have to rely on the same old ideas that you usually use and will be able to try new things and move in new directions. You can learn tricks and ideas from your favorite songs, bands, or players and use what you’ve learned to create new ideas of your own – you will be developing your own individual sound or style.

By now, I would hope that you agree that learning the notes of your guitar is an extremely useful skill to have. The next step is finding the best approach to actually learn, memorize, and master the notes.