Master of the Modes course: https://www.musictheoryforguitar.com/scalesandmodesguitarlessons.html
My first guitar teacher was positively great at destroying my motivation to practice.
That was not an easy task. I was young and playing guitar was such a new thing for me and I was brimming with enthusiasm and I was putting together my first few simple songs…
… but every time he mentioned one specific thing… my spirits went underground, and I didn’t even want to see my guitar.
What was sinking my heart at the mere mention of it? What sapped my motivation more than anything else?
This simple sentence:
“You need to memorize all the notes on your fretboard!”
“S-word that, I’d rather learn another song” I thought to myself every time.
(But I never said it out loud. The guy was big and scary. He was also a hell of a player.)
See, there are two things you need to know about me…
1. I have a horrible memory. It’s like a seashore: every few seconds a wave hits and deletes everything.
Or as my wife says: I have a Teflon brain. Nothing sticks to it 😉
So memorizing notes on the fretboard is precisely the ‘worst case guitar scenario’ for me.
2. I can be incredibly stubborn. (I-grew-my-beard-because-a-former-girlfriend-told-me-to-shave stubborn)
So I spent year after years and years refusing to learn the notes. Just to make a point.
I did not want my teacher to “win” that conversation! I’d find another way! I’d show him!
So I put my time and energy into inventing all possible workarounds to not learn the notes of the fretboard…
(most of these workarounds were frankly ridiculous)
… until I finally had to bite the bullet. Not knowing the notes was holding me back, hard.
Now, I wish I could tell you that my teacher gave me some magic exercises or some transcendental wisdom to learn the fretboard in minutes…
He didn’t.
So I had to find them out for myself.
I spare you the long trial-end-error story and cut to the chase:
– Learning the notes on the fretboard is one of the most useful things you can practice
– With the right exercises, it’s not even hard. Literally 5 minutes a day for a few weeks to learn them permanently. And when I say ‘learn’ I mean ‘effortless recall’. You just know there they are without thinking, period.
– If I had any kind of business sense I would have packaged these exercises in a nice and tidy “guitar fretboard for dummies” course and sold it to you. Instead, you are going to get them for free in this video. And you are going to like them!
Note 1: This is not another “learn your notes in 3 minutes” or “that’s the magic pattern that will help you learn the notes”. There is no magic pattern – I know because I tried them all. My method may not be not as sexy as some of the videos out there that promise you eternal fame and fortune through note learning, but has one feature that beats all other methods to I’ve seen so far: it actually works.
Note 2: Yes, I already had a video on my channel about learning the notes… but in the years I perfected the method. So this is the updated, expanded, “director’s cut” version.
0:00 Intro
0:50 Why you should learn your fretboard
3:00 Fretboard Diagram
3:14 Exercise 1
5:00 Play, don’t memorize!
6:04 Exercise 2
7:20 Exercise 3
8:11 Exercise 4
9:10 Exercise 5
9:47 Exercise 6
11:21 Why you should do the exercises in this order
12:03 “This is too much work”
If you like this video, share, like, comment & don’t forget to subscribe for more content!
Need help with music theory for guitar? Check out these FREE resources: https://www.musictheoryforguitar.com/guitar-music-theory-free-resources.html
FOLLOW ME:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/musictheoryforguitar
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MusicTheoryForGuitar
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theoryguitar
Website: http://musictheoryforguitar.com
