Mapping the Guitar Fingerboard

Mapping the Guitar Fingerboard is a unique and concise guide to learning the fingerboard of the guitar. Regular practice will produce instant recall of every note on the guitar fingerboard in all locations of occurrence. No claim is made of trivial learning ease, all worthwhile endeavors require work. Instead, I assert instead that the study material presented is efficient.

Vertical and horizontal note patterns play notes across the strings and along their lengths in the key of C. Mapping exercises play equivalent notes everywhere they appear on the keyboard in the context of triplets: first in the key of C, then in C-flat and C-sharp.

I originally created the beginning of these exercises for my own use after being admonished in the book Solo Guitar Playing One by Frederick Noad of the importance of the mastery of the entire guitar fingerboard. After proving these exercises in those positions easily accessible to a classical guitar without a cutaway - positions allowing a reach to fret 12 and little beyond - I thought they would be useful to others. To this end, I wrote a computer program to generate the data for the exercises then validated the program against the original material prepared manually. Then I used the same program to generate the data for wider ranges on the guitar, ranges for lower notes on all guitars and to the upper notes of both classical and 24-fret electric guitars. The data was then mapped to standard music notation using a music editor. Conveniently, the scientific music notation output by the program translates directly into material benefiting students without knowledge of standard notation as well.