Guitar Mastery Simplified: How Anyone Can Quickly Become a Strumming, Chords, and Lead Guitar Ninja (9 page)

Fingerpicking Exercises - Songs in 6

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Where
the Notes Fall on the Fret Board

The “line” notes (
EGBDF
) appear on the musical staff
as shown below:

The “space” notes (
FACE
) look like this on the
musical staff...

From the low open
E
string to the fifth fret of the
high
E
string, here’s what it looks like...

Now, when you locate these notes on the fret board of your
guitar, you find the Low E (the lowest note on your guitar with standard
tuning); middle C and the high A from the above staff -
all within the first
5 frets!

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Springboards

I’m often asked by students, “
How can I find my way
around the fret board more quickly?
”

When watching a great guitarist, they often times, make it
look effortless or even impossible. Without knowing the tricks it seems
like magic. But alas, it’s knowledge and VERY attainable. Let me
emphasize that these are learned skills. Sometimes I’m also asked why one
would even care to know the notes on the fret board.

Some players may never desire to know such things, or what
they play does not require them to know it as readily. But what they don’t
know CAN hinder their playing.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to convey. You
might go your whole life and play in a band and NOT know the notes on the fret
board. However, in certain (and many) settings, if you don’t have that
knowledge, you are going to look pretty silly NOT being able to play something
that is required of you.

Let’s say, I walk into a studio and the producer hands me a
chart that is in the key of C - I sure better know where a C is! If I
don’t, I’m going to have problem playing a solo or improvising in any way.
So the short of it is, knowledge is power and since you are smart enough
to be filling your head by reading this, I trust you are someone that wants to
excel and are ready for the challenge.

When it comes to knowing your fret board, there are a myriad
of techniques that you can use to determine which note they are playing at any
given point in a song. Below are two diagrams I refer to as
“springboards”, which are great tools to enable you to know exactly where you
are on the fret board.

Stationary Springboards Diagram

Know the names of your
open strings E, A, D, G,
B and E.
Also,
remember where your root notes are for all your open chords - E, A, D, C,
G etc.

Know the octaves of your
open strings which are at the 12th fret and those open chord roots which
are exactly 12 frets higher than their originals. So there your E,
A, D, G, B & E are again.

Remember how we learned
to tune the guitar to
itself
using that 5th/4th
fret technique? Well, since you know that already you have another
springboard

12 frets up from the
notes found on that tuning technique will give you yet another springboard
location.

Movable Springboards Diagram

*All the numbered dots are “C” notes.*

Notice numbers 1 and 5.
They are strings E and A. ANY note on those strings will have an
octave available down 2 strings and UP 2 frets as denoted by numbers 2 and
6. So 2
goes
with 1 and 6 goes with 5. Get
it?

Now notice numbers 2 and
6. These are on strings D and G. ANY note on those strings will have
an octave available down 2 strings and up 3 frets as denoted by numbers 3
and 7. So 3
goes
with 2 and 7 goes with 6.
See, now you are getting it!

Now check out numbers 3
and 5. I use this one a lot, too. Since these are both on E
strings (high and low), they will always be mirror images.

You could also associate,
for instance, 1 and 4 or 5 and 2, etc., but the others are more apparent.
The more you know, the better a guitarist/musician you become.