Tip of the Day – Know Your Notes

Knowing the notes on the neck is important on many levels. It adds a certain concreteness to what you play when you know and use note names rather than fret numbers. It helps with communication with other musicians. Try telling your keyboard or sax player “I’m playing the note on the 8th fret” and watch the troubled, quizzical looks that follow! It is also much faster to communicate. I would much rather say to my other guitarist or students “play G5″ than to say “take your first finger and place it on the 6th string at the 3rd fret, then place…” .

Finally, any pattern on the guitar that doesn’t use open strings is moveable. If you know where the root is in that pattern and you know the other notes on the same string, it is simply a matter of relocating that pattern to the desired new root note in order to move to a new key.

Very short-sighted not to know your notes on the neck.