individual
notes
Fret board Exercise Part 2
This fret board note naming exercise was
taught to me by my private teacher in the 90’s who was a former student of Joe
Pass. At the time he was studying guitar at GIT and he told me Joe had taught
him this fret board note naming exercise in his private lesson. Later on I read about the same exercise in an article from Jazz guitar player magazine. The
author of the article was none other than Joe Pass. I found this particular lesson
very helpful to me in terms of learning the notes on the guitar fret board quickly.
I highly recommend it to any guitarist who
wants total command of the names of notes & where they are located on the
neck.
The last lesson I wrote about was on how tofind the notes on the guitar chromatically. That blog/lesson was great for beginner guitarists. If you want to be at more advanced level you should be
able isolate any one note from the chromatic scale and be able to play it all
over the neck. For example if I were to
ask a student to play me all the Bb’s all over the neck on each string he
should be able to do it without any hesitation. He should be able to play all
Bb’s on each string between the 1st & 12th fret and
repeat the exercise between 12th & 22 frets.
Click on photo to view
So on day 1 you would practice all the A’s,
A#’s & Ab’s with a metronome. Start with a slow tempo 60bpm and work your
way up to 100 or 120bpm. First start with whole notes at 60bpm and say all the
A’s on each string between 1st & 12th fret. Then move
on to the A#’s & Ab’s. Repeat the exercise between 12th & 22nd
fret. After you’ve accomplished naming the notes in perfect time at different tempos
& without stumbling you can move on to half notes & quarter notes. You
don’t have to strictly follow the practice schedule above as is. You can
stretch it out & tailor it to your liking and learning curves. Move on
until you feel you have absorbed the info until you can execute the exercise perfectly.
You can turn Day 1: A, A#,Ab, into a weeks or 3 days’ worth of practice. This
way you stay on those notes longer & get to know where they are on the
neck. After you feel you know where
those notes are placed on the fret board move to the next 3 notes. In 3 months
you should be able to name any note on any string or fret with ease & speed.
Guitar6music.com is a participant in the Amazon Services
LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to
provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising
and linking to Amazon.ca.
