Guitar fretboard notes

A fretboard chart draws the neck, or fingerboard, from above, as tablature does:

• The six lines are the strings, the low E at the bottom and the high E at the top, as in tablature, each named at its left. Guitarists number them from the top: the high E is the 1st string, the low E the 6th.
• The thick line at the left is the nut. Left of it stand the open strings, the notes you play without fretting.
• The numbers under the neck name the frets with inlay marks: 3, 5, 7, 9, 12 with its double mark, 15, 17, 19 and 21.
• Each dot is a note and holds its name; the amber dots are every place of one note.

Every note comes back across the neck, and three repeats are enough to find it anywhere:

1. Twelve frets up on the same string is the same note an octave higher.
2. On the next string up the same note lies five frets lower, and four frets lower from the G string to the B string: neighboring strings are tuned five half steps apart, except G and B, four.
3. Two strings up and two frets on is the same note an octave higher, or three frets on where the shape crosses from the G to the B string, from the D string to the B and from the G string to the high E: the C at fret 8 of the lowest string and the C at fret 10 of the D string; the A at fret 7 of the D string and the A at fret 10 of the B string. These are the octave shapes.

A tuning changes the shapes whose two strings it moves by different amounts. In Drop D the lowest string's octave lies two strings up at the same fret, and every other shape stays.

To memorize the fretboard, learn it in layers, each built on the one before:

1. The open strings, E A D G B E from the lowest: many guitarists remember them as Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie.
2. The natural notes on the lowest two strings, from the open string to the 12th fret. The roots of most chord shapes lie there, and the high E string holds the low E's notes two octaves up: three strings learned at once.
3. The octave shapes, to carry each of those notes to the D, G, B and high E strings.
4. The inlay frets as landmarks: on the lowest string the 5th fret is A, the 7th B and the 12th E; on the A string they are D, E and A.
5. One note at a time: find every place of it on the neck, say the string and the fret of each, then check it against the chart.

Retune a string and every note on it moves with it: a string tuned a whole step down has each note two frets higher than in standard. Drop D lowers only the lowest string, to D, so the other five read as in standard. Drop C is Drop D a whole step lower on every string, Drop B three half steps lower. DADGAD changes three strings: the lowest to D, the B string to A and the highest to D. The order of the notes along a string is the same in all these guitar tunings; only the note each string starts on moves.

A scale is a set of these notes, played in order from its root. The first one most guitarists learn is the minor pentatonic: on A it is A C D E G, five notes you find on every string of the chart. Start with the A minor pentatonic scale and find every other scale in every key under guitar scales.