Acoustic Guitar Fretboard

You can learn the guitar fretboard in a very short period of time. It's quite simple really.

The reason people often have difficulty in learning is because they:

1. Can't see the big picture and


2. Don't break things down into manageble chunks

An example of the BIG picture in relation to the fretboard is 'The same notes are repeated over and over and over'

The manageable chunks are 'There are only six strings to learn' = one a day for 6 days

So let's look at one of the manageble chunks.

In music you only need to know a small section of the alphabet A B C D E F G

The lowest sounding string on a guitar is generally tuned to E

If we were only using ABCDEFG and were going from A to B to C to D etc the sound would be getting a little higher. Don't worry too much about the detail, just try and get an overview.

And again if we were only using ABCDEFG and were going from G to F to E to D etc the sound would be getting a bit lower, not much just a little.

So the first thing you need to master is the letters of the alphabet A B C D E F G and what will be extremely useful for the future is to learn those 6 letters backwards. G F E D C B A

So there are two simple things to learn:

1. There are only 7 letters of the alphabet to learn
   
2. It's useful to learn them backwards

NOTE: I will be adding to this post very shortly. Don't be fooled by the simplicity of this information if you are a good player already, over a period of time I'll be explaining

--- How to use Jazz improvisation to enhance your playing acoustic blues and other styles.

--- And also some interesting things like how to integrate aspects of Indian music into your playing.

--- How to play open tuning guitar, DADGAD is great but it's only the beginning

The foundation of your music needs to be firm to be able to develop into a balanced musician / guitar player. If you are like me, you'll still want to play guitar in 20 years and will be eternally fascinated by the potential of the guitar and other instruments that the guitar will no doubt morph into.