How do guitarists remember what note each string represents when fretting?

Question

I have played piano most of my life and am now learning guitar.

On piano, I can glance at any key I happen to be hitting and immediately see what key it is based on its position within the keyboard, which has a repeating pattern of alternating black and white keys that allows easy visual identification of any note.

The same is not true of guitar. I'm finding that, for example, when forming an open G chord, I have to look at a given string and say to myself "Okay, that's the high E string - I'm on the third fret, so that's....E...F...F#....G. It's G."

I have to count half-steps every time from the string's open tuning. This seems impractical and slow.

Is there some quicker system for figuring this out? Are guitarists just memorizing, or are there tricks to this?

Answer 1

If you come from an instrument so logically laid out and visually easy to understand such as the piano, switching to guitar can be very frustrating, provided you want to go beyond just learning where to put your fingers down, playing some simple chords and having fun. There is no black and white, no hints as to which notes are natural, sharp or flat. On the piano, notes don’t occur in more than one place. There is one middle C on the piano. On the guitar there are four or five.

There is no magic trick for this but there are things you can do and use to help you. Here are a few, although there are more than just these.

1. Memorize the 12 chromatic notes and their frets on the low E string to the octave. The chromatic sequence applies to all strings, but starts in different places so E 5th fret is the same as A open, etc. Also memorize the dots on the E string to the octave, G,A,B,C#,E. Knowing the dots can get you from place to place much quicker. It’s a good idea to at least know the dots on the lowest two strings because it will help you find barre chords and scale positions much faster.

2. The guitar strings, E,A,D,G,B,E are tuned in 4ths with one exception, G-B is a M3. Use this interval knowledge to get from place to place. A few examples are: low E fret 3 or G, to A fret 3 is a P4, or C. A fret 2 is a M3, B. A fret 5 is a P5. Memorize the intervals within an octave crossing one or 2 strings and the note recognition will start to sink in and get quicker. You can also learn and use intervals across all 6 strings, for example fret 5 low to high is: A,D,G,C,E,A (P4,P4,P4,M3,P4)

3. Learn scale positions, for example, these for a G major scale. They are movable in order to play in any key but also if you know the names of the notes in different scales you can combine the scale degrees with the note names to know what you’re playing.

Bottom line, learning the fingerboard is a combination of memorization and learning how to use physical shapes and roadmaps to get from place to place. It takes time but the knowledge does tend to snowball as you move forward.

Answer 2

Here is a slightly different take.

First of all: learning the the absolute positions of the note is not all that hard. On a 21 fret guitar there are only 126 different notes you can play and only 45 of these are unique. There are only 12 different notes in the halftone scale: you just spent 10 minutes only playing C# you quickly get the hang where all the C# are. Repeat with a different note tomorrow and after two weeks you have it down.

Secondly: In many cases the relative position of the notes is much more important and useful. The role and musical function of a note is not determined by its absolutely value but by its value relative to what else is going on. An A in an A Major chord has a very different role then in an F major chord or a Bb maj 7 chord. (By the way A, F, Bmaj 7 is fun progression to play if you keep the A on top).

That's a lot what the Nashville numbering system is about. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Number_System). Instead of writing Dm7, G7, C they would call it a II, V, I. The idea here is that a II, V, I progression always sounds the same regardless what actual key it is in. (Dm7, G7, C or Am7,D,G or Cm7,F7,Bb, etc). It's (IMO) more important to recognize relative jumps, intervals and progressions than absolute notes.

That's where the guitar comes in handy. The intervals and scales correspond to certain shapes, so you need to learn those. Again, doing 15 minutes a day on a certain scale will very quickly get you there. Same with chord shapes. Guitar makes transposing also relatively easy: you just shift the riff, scale or chord shape up and down the neck (within reason).

Once you have the hang of it, you can move to alternate tunings. When you change the tuning, all the chord and scale shapes change along so you need to relearn them. Typically your repertoire in an alternate tuning will be smaller than in standard tuning, but that depends on how often you use it. An example is Bach's Bourrée which can be played in standard or also with G string tuned down to F#. It's a fun exercise to learn both versions.

Answer 3

Here is a classical guitarist's view. A classical guitarist has to learn the individual note positions because much of our music is made up of sequences of individual notes, or has notes in a chord which aren't the standard chord positions. We start by learning all the frets in "position 1" where the index finger is placed at the first fret (so the first four frets), then position 2, usually followed by positions 5 and 7 (each time the index finger is placed on that numbered fret and the rest on the remaining three adjacent higher frets.

Doing scales helps, as long as you don't do it automatically. My teacher doesn't bother with scales, as he reckons playing real music will have plenty of mini-scales to practice on. I have memorised quite a few two note intervals, both on a single string and cross-string, and I do use some of the standard chord positions.

To give a guide as to level of difficulty the ABRSM classical guitar syllabus says: Grade 1 - position 1; Grade 3 - position 2; Grade 5 - position 5; Grade 6 - above 5th position.

However the example the OP gives, of the standard open chord of G major my advice would be like most others here- learn the shape, together with the fret number for one of your fingers. And keep practising - it will gradually sink in.

Answer 4

Many don't.

One way to understand why it's difficult is this: image you have two keyboards, like a double manual harpsichord, but the upper manual is tune a perfect fourth higher that the lower. Now stack a third manual above and make that one a major third higher than the second. Now identify unisons on all three simultaneously! What a nightmare! In a way the six guitar strings are like a six manual keyboard.

Anyway, my fretboard pitch identification is pretty bad, but these are things I do and few I should do...

• first know the open string pitches
• from the open strings learn the first three steps up, that should be easy
• use the fretboard dots (if your guitar has them) to get oriented for other pitches
• learn the unisons that are formed at the 5th fret for the next higher string (and the 4th fret for the B string)
• learn the octave that are formed at the 7th fret for the next lower string
• learn the octave at the 12th fret
• from any of those 4th, 5th, and 12th frets learn also the steps above and below

Finally, learn your basic barre chords and pitch members of those chords - root, third, and fifth - exploit the harmony knowledge you have from keyboard to get specific pitches. Ex. you know the third and fifth of a A major chord are C# and E, play and A barre chord and you can identify it's pitches, such as: A major barred at 5th fret, the C# is the 3rd string on the 6th fret. (I hope... yup that's right.) You could do something similar with E form barre chords and their chordal fifths to get pitches on the 4th string. I haven't actually done this, but it seems like a quick and dirty way to get pitches on the 3rd and 4th strings, which is a weak point for me.

Keep in mind, when actually playing it's probably far more important and practical to know the relative intervals of the fretboard. For example, you should know the "shape" of thirds between two strings, and the patterns of playing minor/major thirds diatonically, but you don't need to know all the pitch letters. Definitely you want to be aware of where the tonic of a prevailing key is and the root of chords, as music modulates through keys and chord progressions you might not need to know all pitch letters, but tonics and keys should be known.

Answer 5

Simple answer is - mostly they don't. Each chord has a particular shape, and there are markers on the fretboard (3,5,7,9,12) to help navigate. I wouldn't be surprised if well over 50% of guitarists, particularly at the lower playing levels, don't know the note names anyhow. I know I didn't, even though I played piano, like you, for several years previously.

I would still have to stop and count up to find what a particular note I'm playing is called, and that's mainly because we guitarists use patterns which are easily moveable from key to key. Playing for example, a melody (all fretted) in key A needs only for all notes to be played one fret higher to be in B♭ - the pattern doesn't have to change.

And - addressing chord shapes, it doesn't help too much calculating each note in each chord. Your open G chord could have a B or a D on the 2nd string. Or an open C chord, of which there are several combinations of notes (voicings) all of which are acceptable, each note being either C, E or G. So, instead of trying to rationalise chords, simply learn their appropriate shapes, and don't worry about what the constituent notes are. And the same goes for scale patterns; when in the middle of playing, you won't have the luxury of time to do that anyway!

If there are any guitarists who work in a different way, (such as OP is trying), please proffer your answer, as I can't understand how that would work. Thanks!

Answer 6

It's been a long time, so my memories might not be precise, but I think I'd never count it semitone by semitone. I think at the beginning I'd count it by naturals, so let's say "string E, first fret F, third G, fifth A, seventh B, eighth C". The ones in between were in between.

After a while I'd know the fourths and fifths of everything, so "G string first dot, yeah that's C".

Next, I think, I started remembering (not purposefully memorising, but remembering from using it) that "from A to C it's three semitones" or "from D to F# that's four semitones" and such.

With a guitar, a lot of songbooks will give you drawings of the chords, so you just do what you see and don't even really have to analyse it. But before I started playing the guitar, I played the banjo for a while. Beyond a short introduction lesson from my father, I was self-taught, no handy chord sheets around (and this was before the era of internet in every household). So what I'd do was exactly that if I came across a chord I didn't know how to play, I'd figure out, string by string, how to hold it. "Oh shit A7. Okay, so on C, I can play... C#, on G, that'll be... actually just G, on D, there's an E, and A I can leave be. Yep can do that." Still easier than the guitar, though, only four strings. (And a lot of transposition when the songs weren't written in the easiest key in the songbook, but I guess that's another story.)

Not sure if any parts of this will be of use to you, but this is how it was for me and as far as I can tell the rest is just practice.

Answer 7

As a beginner guitarist (less than 12 months) I used a combination of things like making a mnemonic for each of the open, 3rd,5th, 7th frets accross the neck , with standard tuning 7th is easy (BEAD). 9 - 12 is harder because there are no obvious mnemonics I can see but it all just repeats again at 12.

But as other more expert players have stated it also gets easier because you quickly learn 'shapes' ie meaning you can always find the intervals in a scale in a fixed pattern for both major and minor m the same for the octave if you have enough strings left . Then it just came to playing scales starting on different roots on the low E and A strings whilst stating the note name and interval , then doing the same for the circle of 5ths.

you very quickly remember them. When you have that you can do a pattern to find 7th . 9ths etc.

Answer 8

My teacher (small class, not one on one) has us working on scales as well as pieces of music. He told us to get a left hand fingering that works for the scale of the piece we want to play, so instead of fretting about which fret to play, we know which finger (so the finger for a particular fret depends on the key).

I suggest that you learn tablature. One of the ladies in my class, who is, like yourself, a pianist, passionately hates tablature, but it is a good way to learn technique and follow someone else's arrangement. You can also transcribe a piece in tablature as you figure out the fingering. Don't worry about mistakes: your ears will tell you if you get it wrong.

Of course, if you want to play Schoenberg, my advice may not be much use.

Answer 9

As a guitar teacher my first response to this question is to gently challenge its assumptions:

[The piano] has a repeating pattern of alternating black and white keys that allows easy visual identification of any note.
The same is not true of guitar.

But this is written by a musician who begins with this sentence:

I have played piano most of my life and am now learning guitar.

To which my response is: Of course! Of course you are going to feel that way. But it's a subjective viewpoint. My experience is exactly the opposite. I have been playing guitar for years and find the note arrangements on my guitar fretboard natural and instinctive. On the other hand I can play piano at a very basic level, and I often find myself consciously "working out" notes by starting from a key that I know and counting up or down.

So to make progress as a guitar student, step 1 is really important:

• accept that you are learning a new instrument, and study it on its own terms.

If you make any comparison between guitar and piano, make it a comparison between playing the guitar now and playing the piano then. Think back to the time when you first sat down to play a piano, and visualise the journey you've been on. You can begin a parallel journey with guitar, but understand that it is a journey. Give yourself time and space to do it well.

As I journey with my students, some of the signposts that they find helpful are:

1. Naming the strings. The guitar is a stringed instrument that has to be tuned every time we play. Knowing the note names of individual strings is essential.
2. Connecting the strings. This can be done by name or sound. For example, string 6 fret 5 has the same sound as string 5 open. Identifying equal sounds on different strings helps to build connections, whether or not you know that the note name is A natural.
3. Playing alternate forms of music. For example, take a simple tune (Happy birthday?). Learn to play it on one string. Now learn to play it on two different strings. Now learn to play it on a different set of strings.

Other answers have given good advice on the technical issues such as fretboard patterns and tones/semitones. My focus here has been on the underlying principles involved. Hope it helps!