Learn Guitar Fretboard Quickly and Efficiently

Learn Guitar Fretboard
and Go Deeper With Your Playing

To do list... learn guitar fretboard. Do you know the names of the bar chords you've been playing? With this simple and effective method you'll quickly be able to identify what chord you're on.

Not only that, but you'll be laying the foundation to step up to more advanced levels of playing. Why? Because by knowing the names of the chords you're on you'll start to make connections all over the fretboard. This lesson is an intermediate guitar lesson but it works for hungry beginners too :-)

You can find diagrams of guitar fretboards with the note names all over the Internet. You'll also find many teachers encouraging you to read music. Although both those approaches are valid, they aren't necessarily the most effective for our purpose. Remember? We want to know what guitar bar chord we're on.

This is a unique and original method to learn guitar fretboard fundamentals. I learned it from one of my mentors, Peter Harris at Humber Jazz in Toronto. He was one of Canada's top jazz guitar educators for many years. He has since passed on... but he inspired many fine guitarists during his tenure at Humber. Peter showed this exercise to me back when I was trying to make the connection between Van Halen and Lenny Breau ;-)

Here's how to do it...

You have 4 fingers for guitar playing.

There are 12 frets on the guitar fretboard.

That makes 3 areas of the fretboard. We'll call these areas "positions" for this drill.

1st finger lines up with 1st fret in Position 1.

1st finger lines up with 5th fret in Position 2.

1st finger lines up with 9th fret in Position 3.

Note: We're working along the low E string right now. This will enable you to know what guitar bar chord you are on when the root is on string 6.

Great! Now you know where the 3 "positions" are along the string. There are some simple instructions coming up that will help you learn your guitar fretboard very quickly. If you practice this technique for 5 to 10 minutes daily for 2 weeks, you will know your low E string "cold."

There is also the guitar lesson video above where I demonstrate everything. But go through these written instructions first. Then come back to the video. You'll really be learning the information that way.