By. Sebastian Gomez

Today I got a story for ya’ll.

When I was first learning guitar I remember being envious of piano players. They never had any issue finding notes since they are nicely color coded;
natural notes (C – D – E – F – G – A – B ) are white keys, and accidentals (C#, Bb, A#, etc.) are black keys. But that all changed when I found this trick!

Count with me!

3 – 5 – 7 – 8

Memorize these number. Say them out loud a few times or write them down in a notebook. Now try playing those 4 frets on the Low E or A string of the guitar, and you’ll hear:

The theme to The Addams Family was one of the first songs I ever learned on the guitar. It was easy and fun to play, and it always got people snapping along.

But wasn’t till a few years later that I realized what I had figured out; I had learned the natural notes on the guitar, the same piano white keys I so longed for.

All of a sudden my world changed. The weights were lifted from my eyes and I could see clearly what was in front of me! But this alone didn’t get me where I am now. I still had one more trick to find: The Octave

The Octave

The musical octave is where the notes repeat. If you count up 8 notes, you’ll find the same note again:

G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

On the guitar the octave follows this patters:

To find a new G one octave higher form the E string, you just need to skip a string (the A string), and skip a fret (the 4th fret), and you land on the 5th fret of the D string. When we try to find an octave from there, we need to adjust slightly, adding one more fret skip to our formula( Skip a string, and skip two frets).
Whichever note you’re looking for, you can repeat this pattern.

And this also works for notes on the A string, like C:

Looking again at our Addams Family theme, we can now play it in all our new octaves.

Apply this to any song you learn and before long you will have a working map in your head of the whole fretboard. This will result in a much more musical understanding of the instrument, and better phrasing of musical melodies.

So remember these fret:

3 – 5 – 7 – 8

If you ever forgot a fret, you needed only to snap your fingers to find it again.

You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here to help! Sign up for a free lesson today!