Category: Notes on the Fretboard (Page 1 of 2)

The Magical Mystical Pentatonic Scale For Guitar

July 26, 2012 / Phil / 0 Comments

If guitarists have a hammer, it’s the Pentatonic Scale. A go-to tool that works in a variety of situations and can get you out of any musical corners you’ve painted yourself into. It’s simple to learn and extremely versatile.

Not only that, but knowing your pentatonic scale makes it easier to learn larger, more complex scales later.

The word “pentatonic” simply means “five tone”. There are only five notes in this scale, as opposed to seven in a normal western scale. It has its origins in Asian and African musics and you can hear that if it’s played very straight. But with some phrasing and ornamentation tricks it quickly becomes useful in rock music… or jazz… or blues… or pop… or country… See where we’re going here? Continue reading

The Epic Guide To Intervals For Beginning Guitar

April 5, 2012 / Phil / 13 Comments

When I was studying music as a kid, just the word “intervals” would make me groan. “Ah, crap… I get it. It’s the distance between two notes. Whooooo cares!?”

But the longer I played, the more I realized that my sight reading skills and ability to understand the construction of a song all thoroughly depended on what I’d learned about intervals. The longer you play, and especially on guitar, the more you’ll think in terms of intervals than note names.

By the way, if you’re not yet familiar with how to read all the notes on your fretboard, that will help to give you an even better understanding of the stuff we’re talking about here. Check out my easy fretboard reading trick here.

So, what are intervals? Continue reading

Beginning Chord Theory For Guitarists

January 12, 2012 / Phil / 7 Comments

As a guitarist you’ll spend 85% of your time playing chords. And you probably have a few chords under your fingers already. G, C, D anyone?

What you and I will accomplish with this article is helping you understand 3 things about chords.
Step 1 will be learning how they’re constructed.
Step 2, how they’re placed on the fretboard.
Step 3, some basic chord relationships.

To follow this article on beginning chord theory for guitarists, you’ll need to know how to find notes on your guitar fretboard. If you haven’t yet, be sure to read these two articles first:
Guitar Notes For Beginners – This teaches you all the open position notes.
Easy Guitar Fretboard Reading Tricks – How to read all the rest of the notes on the fretboard.

And be sure to read all the way to the end for a cool bonus item…

And away we go….

How To Use The Guitar Chord Finder

December 12, 2011 / Phil / 0 Comments

I’ve added a very handy tool to the site, a guitar chord finder. You’ll find it in the bottom of the right sidebar.

Eventually you’ll want to understand how to find chord voicings by knowing what notes are in the chord and how to find them on the fretboard.

But as a beginner, it’s really handy to have a chord finder to get a quick fingering for that weird chord you’ve run across. Here’s how to use it. Continue reading

Easy Guitar Fretboard Reading Tricks

November 4, 2011 / Phil / 11 Comments

On the surface, the guitar fretboard is a mess of notes seemingly thrown on there at random. But the reality is that there’s a very easy system to easily help you learn every note on your guitar’s fretboard. You can learn the entire fretboard in 30 minutes with this trick.

None of my teachers ever showed me this for some reason. So I make sure all my students know about this easy guitar fretboard reading trick. Continue reading