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If you want help with this lesson then check out the accompanying free e-book: “Learning The Guitar Notes” in which I show you some amazing tricks that will help you learn the fretboard in days.

Most guitar players realize they need to put some effort into learning the guitar notes on the fretboard at some point.

However most become overwhelmed by the seeming effort it will take to learn so many notes and think it will be a difficult task to accomplish.

There are plenty of resources out there saying they can teach you how to learn all the notes on the fretboard. Unfortunately they are mostly terrible.

The fact is that it is much easier to learn all the notes on the guitar fretboard. You just need to know about a secret pattern that not many people are aware of. When you know this pattern it will make learning the 288 positions (if your guitar goes up to 24 frets) much easier than you may think. It will cut down the time you need to memorize all the notes to a matter of days, not weeks or months. (By the way if you want a visual aid in the form of diagrams for this lesson, then download the free e-book).

So first of all we can cut the number of notes that need to be learned in half because the guitar fretboard repeats after the 12th fret (the first 12 frets are the first octave, the next 12 are the second octave). So the notes appear in the same order from the 12th fret to the 24th fret as they do from the 1st fret to the 12th fret. Now you only 144 note locations to learn.

In case you don’t know total there are 12 different notes used in Western music, these are: C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/, A, A#/Bb and B.

Note that the #’s and b’s (sharps and flats) are between the other notes C and D, D and E, F and G, G and A, A and B. This means we can also cut out these notes. Now we are only left with 42 because we will easily see the sharps and flats appear between the other notes once we’ve learned the positions of the notes C, D, E, F, G and A.

Now find a diagram of all the notes on the fretboard (for example there is one in the free e-book that you get when you join the Guitar Theory Revolution newsletter) and look at the Universal Note Pattern . Ever note follows this pattern. Because between the 1st fret and the 12th fret each note appears only once on each of the six guitar strings. So if you take the start of the pattern to be the notes appearing on the low and high E string then you’ll see the pattern repeat over and over for each note.

Getting to know this note pattern is the quickest and easiest way to learn all the notes on the guitar fretboard. As I said before it is best to concentrate on the notes C, D, E, F, G, A and B because that means you’ll eventually automatically see the sharp and flat notes between them.

Also you should always try to sing or hum the notes that you are playing because it helpes to improve your ability to recognize notes by ear.

Finally make sure you learn the locations of the notes independently to other notes. Although it can be helpful to use other notes as a reference, it’s best to know each note ‘cold’. The Universal Note Pattern is hands down the most important pattern you can learn as a guitar player, it will help you learn all the notes on the guitar, help you learn the CAGED system easily and will help you easily learn scales like the Major, Minor and Pentatonic scales. When you learn all the notes on the guitar you’ll be streets ahead of 90% of other guitar players.

If you want help with this lesson then check out accompanying the free e-book: “Learning The Guitar Notes” in which I show you some amazing tricks that will help you learn the fretboard in days.