You’re not alone! I’ve been playing the guitar for over 20 years, but a few years ago I decided that I wasn’t playing as well as I wanted to. After all, when you’ve been doing something for over 20 years, you should have become pretty good at it, right?
So, I decided to sit down and really analyze my playing and try to discover what was holding me back, and you know what I discovered?
That’s right – despite over 20 years of playing, I could only quickly find notes on the E and A strings. And as for scale knowledge – sure, I could play the usual major, minor and pentatonic patterns in the most common forms, but my scale knowledge didn’t stretch any further than that. Even those scales I did know, I could only play in one or two positions which seriously limited my soloing ability. My chord knowledge was not much better either, only stretching to the common open chords and barre chord forms and with little ability to find my own voicings.
When you think about it, this is really quite amazing. Imagine a piano player who’d been playing for 20 years admitting they don’t know all of the notes on the piano keyboard. Unthinkable! Yet, due to the way guitarists often learn their instrument this is the case for a vast number of guitarists. All of their flash technique and cool sounding effects are often covering up a dirty little secret – that they don’t really know their instrument as well as they should!
So, what’s the problem? Well, whether they teach themselves or are taught by a teacher, most guitarists go about learning the fretboard through a repetitive process of mindlessly repeating a few scale patterns until they are committed to memory. Similarly, chord shapes are often learned purely by rote as and when required to play a particular song, without any consideration or understanding of why the chord is the shape it is.
This method of learning is usually enough to get the guitarist to the point where they can sound "cool", so many don’t bother taking the extra steps to really understand what it is they’re playing and as a result they’re limited to the same old tired patterns and chord shapes, and they get totally lost if ever challenged to play outside the confines of their normal patterns.
I realised that my lack of knowledge of the guitar fretboard was the main thing holding me back from achieving my dreams of being a really great guitarist. So, I resolved to do something about it. But, my attempts at learning fretboard theory from books was short lived – the books were just so boring, and I really couldn’t keep motivated to work through them all.
So, I tried looking for some software to help me. But the only software I could find seemed content just to teach the names of the notes on the fretboard by repetitive questions, and I realized knowing the notes is not enough to understand the fretboard! What good is being able to find the G# on the fourth string if you don’t know how to find the major sixth interval from it? Or how to use it as a root for a blues scale? Or a Phrygian mode? Or how to build a diminished chord from it?
So, I decided to write my own software so that I could learn the fretboard effectively, and Guitar Notes Master was born!
And, now I’m ready to share it with you, so that you can also understand the guitar fretboard…
Guitar Notes Master is an interactive teaching tool dedicated to enabling guitarists to gain a thorough understanding of guitar fretboard theory – notes, scales, arpeggios and chords – as quickly and effortlessly as possible. It achieves this through three modules:
While most "fretboard trainer" software programmes simply encourage you to learn through repetition, Guitar Notes Master features a wealth of interactive lessons covering all topics related to guitar fretboard theory, from the very basic level of learning the open strings right up to advanced topics such as Whole-Tone scales, modes and complex chord types. The lessons are interactive, so as you progress through them Guitar Notes Master will give you a few examples and then ask you to complete further patterns yourself on the virtual fretboard, thus ensuring that you really understand what you are reading. You can navigate back and forward through the lessons, and listen to the examples through MIDI playback functionality.
No previous knowledge is assumed, so it is suitable for beginners to the guitar as well as more experienced guitarists.
As well as "understanding", I realised that the other key to learning the fretboard patterns is repetition. But not just repetition of patterns on the guitar as you might be used to – this encourages mindless "practice" that might get a few shapes under your fingers but won’t lead to the understanding of the fretboard that is really required to become a great guitarist.
Rather than mindlessly repeating scale patterns, Guitar Notes Master encourages you to get the patterns into your head first before you transfer them to the guitar. It does this through a Practice module that randomly asks you to answer questions based on the lessons that you have completed. The questions require you to think through your answer so you gain real understanding of how the fretboard patterns are built – understanding which you can use to create further patterns and really unlock the fretboard.
I also realised that it’s important to be repeating these exercises as often as possible. This is where Guitar Notes Master can really be beneficial since the questions are always answered using a virtual fretboard, so you don’t need to be anywhere near a guitar in order to practice. There’s no minimum time you have to spend answering questions either, so it’s really easy to fire up Guitar Notes Master at any time, answer a few questions and then get back to whatever else… Read more…