All notes guitar fretboard

Tutorial with explanations to learn the all notes guitar fretboard.

All guitar string notes

When the sequence of notes that you can find below is well understood, we will be able to see how the notes are materialized on guitar.

Before looking at the guitar notes, you need to know the notes of the open strings (i.e. the frequency at which you have to tune them before playing). Indeed, when you sound one of your strings without pressing the neck, the sounds correspond or at least should correspond (if you are tuned in this way) to the following notes :

Guitar string notes
Strings notes

It’s quite simple and to know by heart to understand the end of our tutorial : the all guitar notes.

Don’t forget to use our guitar tuner to be just.

All notes on the guitar fretboard

To understand our tutorial all notes guitar fretboard we will apply the notes theory (than you can find below) to the guitar neck.

Reminder of below :

  • The musical notes follow a logic of frequency and are called : C (do), D (ré), E (mi), F (fa), G (sol), A (la), and B (si)
  • These notes can have alteration (# or b) that make them vary and increase (#) or decrease (b) the note by a semitone
  • The sequence of notes by semitones is : C – C# – D – D# – E – F – F# – G – G# – A – Bb – B

You can now look at this guitar fretboard :

guitar notes
The guitar notes

3 things to notice:

  • As you can see on the left, we have the notes of the open strings : E – A – D – G – B – E
  • If we go up the neck to the right, we have a sequence of notes, which, if you look carefully, corresponds to our sequence of notes by semitones (C – C# – D – D# – E – F – F# – G – G# – A – Bb – B)
  • Finally, you can notice that I stopped at the 5th guitar fret because, for most strings, this is the moment when the note corresponds to the next open string (except for the G string where it is at the 4th fret)

If you have remembered the names of the open strings and the sequence of notes by semitones, you should be able to know the notes on the neck all the way to the end of the neck.

You just have to remember that between the E and the F as well as the B and the C there is only one semitone (i.e. no alteration).

Then you just have to recite this sequence to find your notes from the open string.

Exemple :

I take the second string from the top that is (if you are tuned) the A string.

If I advance to the third fret without going beyond it, I have to know with the help of my note sequence by semitones where I am:

A – Bb – B – C (and I stop before the 4th fret)

So, going back to our YouTube tutorial on chords positions, look at the chord of A whose bass is the 2nd open string (i.e. note A) :

chord
A chord

You will understand that, if I make a barre chord and I move on the neck to the right keeping the same position, my chord changes according to the sequence of notes by semitones.

So I would have the following chords :

chords semitones
Chords by semitones

Scale notes you can find on guitar fretboard

Scale notes
Scale notes

“The scale notes” on guitar or not, is an expression that does not mean much. Indeed, each scale is different and the notes are differents (some are played, others not).

But we can schematize and say that, in Western music, the frequencies are materialized and divided into notes of which the main ones are C, D, E, F, G, A and B.

The interval of notes

it is often easier to talk in terms of intervals of notes.

Here we won’t talk about music theory but we will see the usefulness of knowing the intervals between the different notes to find your way more easily on the guitar.

As you can see on the picture of the piano we are using (below), the sequence of notes is not left to chance. Each note is separated by an interval.

There are two types of intervals :

  • the tones (which I symbolized by the T)
  • the semitones (symbolized by the ST)
Intervals notes
Intervals of notes

It is quite explicit to take the example of the piano keyboard to understand this story of interval.

Indeed, if you look closely, between the white notes (at the bottom of the keyboard) there is almost always a black note. These are the main notes (C, D, E, F, G, A and B) that are altered with sharps (#) or flats (b).

Briefly :

  • Between each white note and each black note, there is a semitone
  • Between each white note, there is almost always a full tone
  • … except when there is no black note between two white notes (which happens between E and F as well as B and C) : there is then a semitone

I hope you understood well the logic of the notes, in music and most particulary on guitar with this tutorial about all notes guitar fretboard.