Tips to Learn the Notes on your Guitar | Fretboard Mastery | Steve Stine Guitar Lesson

[Music] hey Steve Stein from guitars I'm here thank you so much for joining me today we're going to be doing is looking at a couple of different ways that you can approach memorizing the notes on your guitar depending on what works for you and where you're at on your guitar journey but just a word of caution it's really important once you start doing something like this to spend some quality time on a daily basis practicing so it becomes second nature to you okay if you just practice it a little bit and it kind of goes away it's really hard to memorize this sort of thing so the first thing we need to do is we need to discuss the actual notes that exist on the guitar that we're going to apply it to a string and I'm going to give you the tools to be able to do that in all six strings and then I'm going to show you another kind of unison octave trick that I do to try and teach people how to memorize the notes all over the fretboard all right now we need to break this into three different parts number one we need to learn what the notes are on the guitar number two we need to learn how to apply them to each string and then number three I'm gonna show you a little trick that you can do to try and memorize them across the fretboard okay so first of all what we need to do is we need to learn the notes now quite simply I'm gonna run through this as quickly as possible I do have other videos that go into this a bit more detailed but we are dealing with twelve different notes on any standard instrument the guitar the piano whatever it is that we might be talking about so we have what we're gonna call prime notes those are the white keys on the piano and those notes are ABCDE F and G there's no age there's no L there's no Q anything like that it just goes from A to G and then if you think about a piano those notes would just keep getting repeated over and over and over in what we call octaves so if you were playing the piano it's okay if you don't I don't either but if you have ABCDE F and G and then it starts all over a b c d e f and g a b c d e f and g and so on you're repeating those same notes in octaves well the guitar also has octaves okay but we do also have the black keys on the piano as well and the black keys we're gonna call those sharps or flats okay now I'm gonna make this all very easy to understand once we get to the but just kind of follow me here so if we have seven notes ABCDE F and G and those are the seven white keys on the piano if every one of those white keys got a little black key right next to it we'd wind up with 14 notes we'd have the white key a and then a little black key which is a sharp which right now we're just going to talk in terms of sharps we'll get to the flats in just a second see if we went to the C on the piano we'd have a little a black key called C sharp and if we went to the G on the piano we'd have a little black key called G sharp so we'd wind up with seven white keys and seven black keys which would give us fourteen different notes but we don't have that you might have noticed on the piano before that there's a couple of spots where there's no black key in between the white keys okay that's between the notes B and C and E and F so if you follow my way of thinking for now we'll come back around to this but B wouldn't get a sharp an e wouldn't get a sharp on the piano okay there wouldn't be a little black key between B and C and there wouldn't be a black key between E and F so if you remember it this way this is how I learned how to do this a long time ago is if I just remember that all the notes ABCDE F and G if I think of it this way all the notes get sharps or a little black key okay except for B and E which spells the word B B doesn't get a little black key and it doesn't get a little black key okay so what I've got if I think about it it's kind of a circle I've got the notes ABCDE F and G and then if I put those those accidentals in if you will I'd have a a sharp B C there'd be nothing in between C sharp D d sharp e F there'd be nothing in between those f-sharp G g-sharp and then back to a doing an octave and that's what would cover the entire piano would be those notes okay so we just have to remind ourselves that B and E at this point B and E they don't have sharps B goes directly to C and E goes directly to F now if you need to you could take a little bit of time and try and absorb that idea but what we're going to do is I'm going to show you how that applies to the fretboard so if I was to take six-string for instance now the sixth string when tuned standard is the note e this is your E string so if I was depressed of the first fret of the sixth string I'm raising the pitch by one note well if we think about what we just talked about what comes after E and the answer would be F ok not a sharp because at this point there's there's no such thing as a sharp we would run directly to F so this note would be F now you may have played chords before like an F bar or or something and now you understand that that note is f and why that relates to excuse me the F chord that we're playing right here ok so if we move up again this note right here would be the next note after F well what comes after F in our musical alphabet and the answer would be F sharp because there's a there's a black key behind the F right again always remember everybody gets a sharp except for B and E which spells the word B okay so we have E which goes directly to F and then F sharp and then G because F sharp would go directly to G now what would come after G and if you said G sharp you are correct and then a and what comes after a a sharp you are correct and then what comes after that B and then directly to C because we have to remember B and E smells the word B those two notes don't get sharps so we have C and then C sharp D d sharp and then we get to the two dots we have e all over again so we have me E which means the rest of the guitar now is going to be an octave of the higher than the first part so zero and 12 would be e 1 and 13 would be F 2 and 14 would be F sharp and so on so that's how the guitar works so we're really gonna just at this point deal with zero to 12 trying to get used to those notes okay so the first thing is is trying to wrap your head around the idea of memorizing those notes and then the second part is trying to learn to apply it to your guitar now I used to teach this a lot to students back when I did a lot of private guitar lessons and if I showed the student how to do this that student then would come back the next week and I would say okay find B and they would count open till they find B find D and it would count up until they find D so I was thinking well how could I find an easier way for them to memorize these notes that don't require them to have to count up all the time how could they just memorize these and so what I did was came up with a little trick that you can use to memorize the odd-numbered frets which are where your dots are now you might not have a dot at the first fret and I don't either okay but if I think 1 3 5 7 & 9 now we know 12 is going to be the octave but we have 1 3 5 7 & 9 so let's memorize those notes just thinking about the odd-numbered frets the ones with the dots so 0 is e of course so let's go to the first fret we know that's F this is f sharp this is G so what you do is you start memorizing F and G 1 and 3 F and even if you just take five minutes and just think about that F and G one and three and visualize it in your head I mean I I know it seems silly but it really is that easy just try and think about those now F and G now if we go to the next one go to the fifth fret this one is going to be a because we had G g-sharp a so so far this is quite convenient we have F G and our prime notes one three five F G a so again you could take a few minutes and just think about that and study that in your head F G a one three five so somebody could quiz you what's at the fifth fret a what's at the first fret F what's at the third fret G and you just get those straight in your mind let's keep going if we go to the seventh fret we have B F G a B because a sharp is in the middle there's B now this is where this change is okay it's been really convenient up to that point because F G a and B have all lined up with those odd numbers but B if we remember what we were talking about before about the the keys on a piano B goes directly to see right here so C is a space c-sharp is actually on the dot but here's what we do D is on the space on the other side of that so if we've memorized that C and D surround that ninth fret that last dot before the two dots C and D surrounded so we have F G a B C and D F G a B C and D okay and I always tell this story but I had this little little girl that was in guitar lessons and I was teaching her how to do this and I I did this and she called it rabbit ears and so for the last 20-some years that's what I think of this ass right whenever I teach this so f G a B C and D okay so you just start off by memorizing 1 3 5 7 8 and 10 F G a B C and D F G a B C and D memorize the prime notes first because then when you need to go back and memorize or or find where the sharp is and we're gonna deal with the flats in just a sec here as well if F is here at the first fret and G is here then in between the two is f sharp if G is here in a is here in between those two is G sharp a sharp right so if I know where my notes are this is C and D C sharp okay now if you've heard of flats before we always think of short sharps as moving up and flats move down okay so if we think about it if we have F and we have G in between we have F sharp okay because we're moving up from the F but what if we move backwards from the G we'd have G flat F sharp and G flat are the same note there are two different names for the same note it's called an anharmonic okay so what's awesome here is that you can actually learn all the notes and a little bit more about your theory if you don't really know anything about music theory is understanding that if you do have a sharp you have an opposite flat that you can call it so if we think about it right here if we have G and a we have G sharp and a flat G sharp a flat a and B a sharp B flat a sharp B flat now depending on you know your your history of Education with music you know learning how to play piano or clarinet for something like that you might be thinking to yourself well we we don't really say a sharp very often we say B flat and that's absolutely true and we're not going to get into all the whys of that right now but the great thing about this is now you can understand that they really are the same thing and if it's more common to say B flat then we can certainly call it that but if we do refer to a and B here we know that we can call this a sharp or B flat so that kind of resolves the problem that we have with understanding accidentals okay so again if we go back to the idea of you learning 1 3 5 7 8 and 10 F G a B C and D and again somebody might quiz you on this what's at the fifth fret what's at the seventh fret what's at the 10th fret right do the prime ones first get those solid in your brain before you ever worry about the secondary notes the sharps or flats I'm telling you it's a lot easier if you just study and you you could learn these notes in a very short amount of time if you just everyday sat and studied it thought about it a little bit maybe you have your guitar with maybe you don't but you can still think about those one three five seven eight and ten F G a B C and D and shake them up have somebody ask you what's at the third front what's at the seventh fret what's at the first fret what's at the tenth fret and the quicker you get it being able to answer those questions the better you know them okay then you've got the stuff in between if F is at the first fret what's at the second fret and you could say f sharp or you could say G flat alright so that's one way of being able to memorize each one of the six strings on the guitar if you studied exactly what we just talked about on the sixth string and maybe spent who knows I mean it might take you a week to learn those notes it might take you a month to learn those notes it all depends on how much time you spend really focusing on it slow it down and practice it think about it study it okay get it get it straight in your head as you as you're as you're thinking about these things so if you go to the fifth string the same idea is going to start all over again except the fifth string is gonna start with a and you're gonna do exactly the same idea now that doesn't mean that the one three five seven nine thing that we did is gonna work for every string the same way but you can start off doing that some some notes are gonna line up really great and some strings are gonna have notes that don't line up quite as good but don't worry about any of those strings until you've got the six string built out once you've got the six string like the you know just automate it then go to the fifth string and start learning those notes and don't worry about the fourth string until you've got the fifth string automated okay and then the next thing I want to do and I'm not trying to take too much of your time but I always tell students once you learn a new string try and learn to cross-reference the notes that you're learning right so if you've learned that the fifth string for instance is a so we learned that B is on the second fret of the fifth string which it is because this would a sharp or B flat nay nay sharp or B flat and then me so I'd want to learn that B is on the second fret of the fifth string and B is also on the seventh fret of the sixth string or F for instance here's F on the sixth string and here's F on the fifth string now they're an octave different but they're both s and I would learn that by studying each one of these strings so if I cross-reference each one of these as I go I'm gonna start learning how they relate to each other how each string relates to the past string as far as the notes go okay now the last thing I'm gonna give you and if that's enough you can turn the video off and you could be done with that okay but here's one last thing I want to show you that makes for kind of a quick find if you need to find some other notes on your guitar and maybe you don't have all these strings memorize just yet but you still need to find where a is for instance on the guitar here's a really cool thing that you can do if we go up to the fifth fret of the sixth string we know that this is a now what I'm going to do is give you a little on-screen graph here that's going to show you these notes now if this is a if I go down to the seventh fret of the fourth string that's also a that's an octave and if I go down to the first string fifth fret that's also an A that's another octave now you might know that the sixth string is e and the first string is e so anything you do on the sixth string can be replicated on the first string right six and one so a a and a so what you do is you memorize those and you know you don't have to play it fast or anything but you memorize where those are visually in your head so if you needed F well as long as you can find F on the sixth string you can find F on the fourth string and on the first string or G or B okay so let's go back to the a idea so here's our a those are our names now there those notes exist all over the guitar so I'm going to show you a couple other little ideas that might help you here okay so if we take those notes again a me and a I'm gonna take this note right here I'm gonna put my first finger on there and now I've got an octave of that a that exists on the tenth fret of the second string so I'm skipping a string again in between so this note and this note are the same no they're gonna sound a little different because the string tension is different right there's all kinds of different little things that go into that the thickness of the string is different right but they are the same note so now I've learned a and then I can also find that a well if I take this a right here and put my first finger on that I can head all the way up to the fifth string and I've got another a so this exercise isn't really about how fast you can play them it's can you see them as you look at your guitar can you see these a z' on your guitar okay let's keep going so if I go to the twelfth fret here which remember is the same as a zero I can go from 12 to 14 on the third string which would be the same as going 0 to 2 in the lower octave so now I have a z' and I'd want to just study that not just play it but actually study that and be able to visualize that on my guitar okay let's keep going so we just did our ace here if I put my first finger right there now I've got a of course on the sixth string on the 17th fret here's another a and the 17th fret of the first string those two notes are octaves of the ones we started with okay so I've got so now I'm starting all over again one octave higher and so on now that also means force I can go backwards here so I know I'm kind of rushing through this because I don't want to waste your time but what you could do is just take a little piece of that and just study it you don't have to absorb all of it at once just take a little idea maybe just learn this first position right here and then learn the second one and kind of learn how to visualize those together and it's a great visual tool for trying to find a note quickly on a string that maybe you're not quite as familiar with if you're looking for again the note B right so you're thinking okay well I got to find a B here that's what I'm looking for or [Music] you know something else--something across the fretboard that maybe you haven't quite gotten to or it's just it just makes more sense in your head to find it really quick that way as opposed to memorizing the notes on each string now for me it isn't either/or it's it's kind of both I mean it's just a great way of being able to look at the guitar a little bit differently so hopefully that helps you a little bit in trying to learn the notes that are available on the guitar understanding what octave means and and harmonic and different things like that and then also learning each one on each string cross referencing those notes and then learning the notes across the guitar I call it the unison octave trick and it's not really a trick but because some of the notes are octaves and some of the notes are unison they're the same notes right so it's just a nice way of being able to kind of see the guitar from sort of a spiderweb sort of point of view as opposed to all of the notes so hopefully that helps you a little bit in your study please let me know if there's anything I could do for you please comment below and let me know if this helped you at all do me a favor subscribe to the channel and share the video with somebody that you think might benefit from it and if you like my my guitar teaching style go ahead and check out guitar zoom comm and see some of my guitar courses so take care have a great day and I'll talk to you soon [Music]

Channel: Steve Stine Guitar Lessons

Views: 1,592,005

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Keywords: steve stine, stevestine, steve stine guitar, steve stine guitar lesson, steve stine guitar lessons, fretboard memorization techniques, fretboard memorization, fretboard mastery, guitar notes on fretboard, memorize notes on fretboard, how to learn the notes on guitar, exercises for your guitar notes, learn guitar fretboard notes, how to easily memorize all the notes on the guitar fretboard, learn notes on guitar, how to memorize your guitar fret-board, notes on guitar

Id: rDfw2jRF898

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2019