Knowing where to find each note on the fretboard is important in finding your way around, especially when you try to locate where the next chord should be or where to play to be in the key your friends are playing in etc.

This is what I consider to be a least boring method of learning your fretboard.

Instead of spending your practice time playing notes on the fretboard repeatedly and reciting their names, use that time to practice your finger techniques/songs. You can learn the notes without holding a guitar. Being able to identify a note just by hearing it is a thing few people are able to do anyway. You can try to train your ear to identify the notes later on. It is not so important.

Here's what to do:
When your mind is idling (ie in the bus, at a red traffic light, while in the shower etc) picture a fretboard with your mind. Restrict yourself to frets 0 through 12. Select one of the natural notes ( they're only seven: C_D_E F_G_A B_C ) and find every place this note is found on each string within those first 12 frets. Of course you have to know how a guitar is tuned, and how the notes are spaced, to do that. Try to visualize these spots, don't leave them in the form of sterile numbers. Now recite the numbers while visualizing them. If you have time, after a while select another note and repeat. No more than two notes at each session, because you may start mixing them up. Stick with two or three notes for a few sessions before moving on.
Once you have found where a few of the notes are, the rest should be easy to find. Also, the reason you don't need to expand your reciting past the 12th fret is that the the pattern of notes will be exactly the same, just an octave higher (add +12 to every fret number in the pattern). Knowing where the natural notes are, you can easily find their sharps and flats

The advantage of this is that your knowledge of the notes becomes independent from your finger memory (and you save practice time while make something useful out of mentally idle moments).

For example, on a regularly tuned guitar ( low to high: EADgbe ), you'll find "E" in the following places:
6th string: frets 0(low E) 12(2nd octave E)
5th : 7
4th : 2
3rd : 9(second octave E)
2nd : 5
1st : 0 12(3rd octave E)


- RG -
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