Guitar Notes: How to Learn the Fretboard Fast

With just 10 minutes a day, you can complete the learning path, and you'll know the entire fretboard in 30 days. If you want to learn more about the "why" and "how" behind fretboard memorization, keep reading for the complete guide.

Hit a guitar string and it starts to make a sound.

Boom: that’s a guitar note.

Every note you play has a name.

For example, if you hit the thickest string on the guitar, you get the note E.

Hit the next string, and you get the note A.

In fact, each string is named after the note it produces when we hit that string:

(For more about guitar string names, check out this super quick guide!)

You can play guitar notes one after the other to get melodies.

Or you can play multiple guitar notes at the same time to get guitar chords.

The musical alphabet

Just like notes on any other instrument, guitar notes have ‘letter’ names like A, B or C. We don’t use the entire alphabet though, we just use:

These seven letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) are called 'natural notes'. We can play these notes by pressing different frets on the guitar. Here are the notes for the low E string (that’s the thickest one):

You might notice some gaps in the image above. Some guitar frets don’t have a note name yet.

These gaps are where our ‘sharp’ and ‘flat’ notes are located.

Here’s how that works.

Sharp notes consist of a letter, plus a little symbol that looks a bit like a hashtag: ♯. It tells us to go up one fret on the guitar. For example A♯ means ‘one fret higher than A’ and C# means ‘one fret higher than C’.

Here’s our fretboard again, now with sharp notes added:

Flat notes are really similar to sharp notes. They also consist of a letter plus a symbol. A flat looks like a small b: ♭.

The difference is that flat notes tell us to go one fret down on the guitar. For example, A♭ means ‘one fret lower than A’ and D♭ means ‘one fret lower than D’. Here’s the fretboard with our flat notes:

You might've noticed that sharp and flat notes are located on the same spots on the fretboard. These notes are called 'enharmonic equivalents' - they're the same pitch with different names. For example, F♯ and G♭ produce identical sounds when you play them on guitar. Here's our diagram again:

Maybe you're wondering: when do we use sharp or flat names? If you're just starting to learn the fretboard, don't worry about this right now. Just remember that both note names refer to the same pitch.
When we combine our 7 natural notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) with the sharp/flat notes between them, we end up with a total of 12 unique notes in Western music:

These 12 notes make up our complete musical alphabet. After these 12 notes, the pattern simply repeats at a higher pitch. Think of it like a clock: once you reach 12, the numbers start over again. It’s the same for music, we simply cycle through the same notes.

On guitar, when you get to the 12th fret, you've gone through all 12 possible notes and the pattern of notes starts over. The note at the 12th fret is the same as the open string, just one octave higher.

This is also the reason that many guitars have double dots at the 12th fret. The 12th fret is like a “reset point” where our note pattern start over again.

All The Notes On The Guitar

Now that you understand how notes work on the low E string, let's look at all the other strings too!

Each string follows that same pattern of 12 notes we just learned about. The only difference is that each string starts on a different note (which is why they're named E, A, D, G, B, and E).

Here’s the complete fretboard chart with all the notes:

Yes, it’s way too much information to take in at once! So, how exactly do you learn the fretboard? That’s what we’ll cover next.

Now, I used to recommend a combination of these: learn the low E string and the A string by heart. Then you can use some fretboard math to find the rest of the notes.

This is a pretty good shortcut. But it does have one big downside: when you need to know a note name, it takes you a few moments to figure it out. It's slow and it requires you to think every time.

Simply knowing the note name by heart is faster and easier, even though it requires a bit more learning upfront. It's the same reason we learn multiplication tables in school: we can do the math to figure out what 3×7 is every single time, but knowing that the answer is 21 by heart is much more efficient.

The goal is to put the notes in your 'fast memory', so you remember them instantly when you need them. So, what’s the best way to do that?

How to memorise the fretboard notes?

Over the years, I’ve had many students that realised that learning the note names was important, but they never seemed to get around to it.

It seemed overwhelming or just plain boring.

But think of it like this: there might be 100 things you need to do to become an ‘advanced’ guitarist and learning the notes on the guitar is one of them. This is great news because learning the notes on the fretboard is a simple one to cross off your list. It’s not hard to learn and it makes lots of things a bit easier, like understanding intervals, chords or harmony.

So, to help my students to achieve this easy win, I developed something different.

I wanted to create a learning experience that wouldn't feel like hard work, but an addictive game that makes it easy to put in a little practice every day. Kind of like a mix of Candy Crush and Duolingo, but building useful guitar skills.

The result? A fretboard trainer that builds your knowledge note by note and becomes more challenging over time. With 10 minutes a day, you’ll have the entire fretboard memorised in 30 days.

Curious? Give it a try right now. Here's level 1, focused on just the first three notes on the low E string:

If you’re a complete beginner, please give yourself permission to focus on other things for now, such as playing songs you like to listen to, learning your open chords and learning to strum.

But if you’re already playing for a little longer, you can do yourself a big favour and get those fretboard notes into your brain. It won’t transform your playing overnight, but it will make many aspects of guitar playing a little easier. And with the interactive trainer, you can build this skill with just 10 minutes of daily practice. It doesn’t have to be a slog, it can be fun!

Still feeling hesitant? That's completely normal. But consider this: a month from now, you could either be exactly where you are today, or you could have a skill that will serve you for your entire guitar-playing life. And unlike many other guitar skills, this one has a clear finish line: once you know it, you know it.