Underground Method of Learning the Guitar Fret Board!
By Samuel Malama

Many have come and gone, they have seen and conquered; yet there is one thing they have failed to achieve-knowledge of the guitar fret board (found on the top of the neck with metal bars across it)! Unfortunately whether you believe it or not, knowing your frets is the key to success.

Many guitar players always find it difficult to do so. One would think rocket science is a walk in the park just by the way they go about it. Frets are exactly that, frets! There is no need to fear them. After all, if one has no knowledge whatsoever, how do they expect to play chords?

Yes, you heard right, chords…one of the most petrifying words in guitarville. Frets and chords go hand in hand, if guitar is your thing, better learn or die a slow death. There are different suggested ways of gaining better knowledge of frets, the highly proclaimed being mentally.

MENTALLY

This employs the method of learning away from your guitar. You can learn a fret at a time (in your mind), memory cards or games, mnemonics. They all work; you just need to find which one is the easiest for you. Let us look at all these in detail starting with the mind method.

Learning With Your Mind

The mind is capable of a great many things; humans underestimate it way too much. The best way to go about this technique is to take each fret at a time. Make sure to know all the six notes (if using a six string guitar) on the fret by heart before moving on to the next. Keep doing this 'till you are done.

Memory Cards

This is a great way of going about it; you can even get someone else to hold up a different card each time. Each card has the number of a fret, for example the number three. When you get this card you have to say out the notes G C F A# D G respectively. It goes on like this until you get all of them.

By the way, you don't have to go and buy these cards; you can simply make some at home. No need to spend unnecessary money. (After all, we have too much to worry about with the high gas prices).

Mnemonics

Mnemonics are a sure fire way of learning to some degree. Mnemonics are simply assigning words to correspond with the various letters. An example of this would be the positions of the planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

This would become; My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nice Potatoes, get the point? You can assign each note with any word that you can remember.

What Next?

What next is that you go out and put what you have just learned into action. Knowing your frets will take time, but it is very doable. Don't be afraid of it, it is just the fret board and nothing else.

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Before attempting to learn the modes, a full understanding of the major scale is a must. If you don't know the major scale, stop here and go learn it. It's simple to learn, but make sure it is committed to memory before you move on. Also, when learning the modes, learn one, know it, memorize it and then move on to the next. There is nothing to be gained by knowing something 'a little'.

The first steps in learning the modes of the major scale are learing the names and the order.

Here is the formula of the modes in a C major scale. I'm using a C major here for added simplicity, but the formula (order & names), is always the same, regardless of the key. Only the notes will change.

In C major, when we play the C major scale from C to C, we have the IONIAN Mode (major scale). Going D to D gives us the DORIAN Mode. Next, we get the PHRGYIAN Mode when going from E to E. If we start on F and go to F, we have the LYDIAN Mode. In following, we will obtain the MIXOLYDIAN Mode when we play from G to G. A to A is the AEOLIAN Mode (natural minor), and lastly we get the LOCRIAN Mode by starting on B and going to B.

1.) Ionian (major)

2.) Dorian

3.) Phrygian

4.) Lydian

5.) Mixolydian

6.) Aeolian (natural minor)

7.) Locrian

If you've noticed the rather strange names given the modes, well, we have the Greeks to thank for that. They're terms from Grecian culture, some pertaining to some of the groups and subgroups of people of the period.

The modes give a very distinct 'feeling' when played over the appropriate chord progressions, hence a good understanding is necessary to become a good soloist. Although certain modes are often more associated with certain styles of music, it's best to learn all you can about modal playing.

The great Philosopher Plato believed that listening to music played in a particular mode, would cause one to have behavior associated with that mode. He suggested that soldiers listen to music in the Dorian or Phrygian modes to help make them stronger, and also believed they should not listen to music in the Lydian, Mixolydian or Ionian modes. He believed that those modes might 'soften' them. Plato also believed that a change in the musical modes of the state could cause a wide-scale social revolution.

Soloing Using the Modes

Although we won't get into the modes in depth until a later time in the lessons, I will make a point here. MANY people get confused in the area of modes. They keep hearing how important that they are to know, and they are important. However, I often hear students say something to the effect, 'How come when I play the D dorian scale, it sounds identical to a C major scale ?'. Well, it's going to, it IS a C major scale. You're just starting on the D note of the scale. It isn't the scale, it's the chord that matters. When playing a C major scale over a C major chord, regardless of what note in the scale you start on, it's all going to sound the same, like a C major scale. It's when you use the mode in conjunction with the appropriate chord that you get the 'modal effect'. So, if you play that same D dorian mode (C major scale), over a D minor chord, you will get the modeal effect of the Dorian mode..

The important thing to remember, other that the modes themselves obviously, about modal playing, is...it doesn't matter on which note that you start and stop on when playing. It matters what chords or chord progression you are playing 'against' or 'over'. This is an area where nearly all students get confused unless it's explained very thoroughly starting out.

So, a C major scale, regardless of what note you start or stop on, played over a D minor chord, is a D dorian scale.

We will get more in depth into the study of the modes in a later lesson.