Reading the Guitar Fingerboard

In Standard Tuning, the Guitar fretboard has the open strings “E, A, D, G, B, E” from strings 6 to 1 or bottom to top. We may remember these open string note with the phrase “Every Alligator Does Get Born Early”.

The notes of the fingerboard ascends from the open strings with the chromatic scale up the Guitar neck and descends down the neck. Taking the 6^th string as example, the 6^th string ascends and begin from the open string E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E. And descending from the 12^th fret, we will have E, Eb, D, Db, C, B, Bb, A, Ab, G, Gb, F, E.

Because the “Musical Alphabet” or Chromatic Scale has 12 notes, the notes on the Guitar fretboard repeat the open string notes on the 12 fret 1 Octave above Open. Thus, the 13^th fret hold the same notes as the 1^st fret, the 14^th fret with similar notes as the 2^nd fret, and so on.