If you want to excel at the guitar, you gotta know where your guitar notes are. It’s just a fact of guitar life.

But it can be a little intimidating, right? I mean, each string has it’s own note order and 5 of the 6 are all different!

It’s kind of like English you learned in grammar school. Before you could construct your sentences, write paragraphs, stories, song lyrics, texts, Facebook posts, etc., you had to learn the alphabet. Without knowing all of those letters, everything else becomes difficult if not darn right impossible.

And while you could learn how to speak your language without knowing the letters, you wouldn’t able to read or write. And that creates all sorts of problems in your life. It’s called “illiteracy“.

Guitar is like that.

Sure, you could probably figure out how to play some songs, even do some solos, without knowing how the notes go on your fretboard. But your skills would be severely limited. Guitar playing would be difficult and hard. It could even discourage you from playing in the future.

And that’s not fun.

There are two ways we can solve this problem:

1 – Memorize all the notes on the guitar. You could try it all in one sitting (good luck). You could also just learn them over time. But really, who has time for that?

2 – Use some kind of system to quickly get you to learn those notes.

You knew where this is going…:)

I like to use the dots on the guitar a lot to help find things on the neck.

Let’s just start with three notes on two strings and work from there…

You can start with the low E string and look at the frets with the first three dots (I know some guitars don’t have one on the 3rd fret, pretend on is there for now…). The notes go in this order: G for the first dot, A for the second dot, and B for the 3rd dot. Think ‘GAB’.

Then look at the A string (or the 5th string). Check out the same first three dots. Those notes are C, D, and E respectively.

Just work on knowing those six notes before moving on.

There is so much more. So how about checking this out:

I have a 7 Step System that I have used to help my students find their notes. However, I never put it to writing. Until now.

The whole thing is FREE. No “strings” attached. (see what I did there? LOL Thanks, I’ll be here all night…).

Just click on the link below, enter your email (don’t worry, no spam crap here. I’ll send you some more tips later if you want them), and download the .pdf. That’s it.

It’s pretty easy to follow along with.

I hope it helps!

Once you get your notes mastered, you can improve your knowledge of things like scales and chords: what they are called and where they are.

For example: if you know just four certain barre chord shapes, your library of being able to play ANY major or minor barre chord has increased beyond what you thought possible.

Check out my barre chord article here:

Barre Chord Basics – Pt. 1

As you read through that post, pay special attention to diagrams where I show where the “root note’ is at. Guess what? By knowing your notes on the guitar, you can play that very same shape anywhere, on the guitar. Whatever note that “root note” is pressing down on, is the name of the chord.

So, if you wanna play a C Minor, find the C note on the guitar, form the minor barre chord shape with the root note being on a C and voila! You have a C Minor.

Wanna play an Eb Major? Find the Eb, do the same thing, and you got it!

Check out the article here.

Rock on until the next time!

Tony G.

PPS: Oh and hey, can you do me a favor? I’m starting a mission to grow my You Tube Subscribers to more than a gaggle of geese (Ha!). No, seriously, if you can quickly hop over there and “Subscribe”, it would be so very awesome!

I promise that the videos (most of them at least) will be entertaining and/or informative!

Here is the path to arrive there:

6 String Corner