These exercises are taken from the PraxTrax.org Complete Fretboard Course.
More Free Exercises

Learn the Guitar Fretboard - 10-15 Minutes a Day


Making a concerted effort to Learn The Fretboard is the best way to advance your understanding of the guitar. It is something you can do systematically and gradually over how ever long you want it to take. In fact you should make exercises similar to the ones on this page part of your daily practice routine.

There is no single best method to learn the guitar fretboard. No matter how you try to do it, you'll have to spend some real quality time working at it.

There is one obvious and unsystematic way to do it. Just play and try to be aware of what you're playing, and eventually it will sink in the B is at E7, G is at A10, C is at G5, etc., etc., etc. But like I said, this is basically an unsystematic way to learn the fretboard. We want a systematic way to do it.

Here are three different approaches to learning the fretboard:

  1. First, "vertically" - up and down each string.
  2. Second, "horizontally" - across each fret
  3. And third, you can learn it by note, that is, learn where C is on each string, learn where G is on each string, etc.

You should probably do all three of these things. We give examples here of exercises of each type. If you would like a complete "suite" of exercises for each string, each fret*, and each note**, plus a number of other "rules", patterns, scales, arpeggios and chord shapes, check out our "Learn The Fretboard Course".

Some Free Fretboard Exercises

  1. "Vertical" Exercises
    Learn The Low E String
    Learn The High E String
    G-String
    D-String
    B-String
    A-String

  2. "Horizontal" Exercises
    Fret 5 - The Super Fret
    Fret 7 - An Important Pattern Emerges

  3. Note by Note
    Finding C on All Strings
    Finding G on All Strings

  4. Rules and Patterns
    2 + 2 Rule
    7 Fret Rule
    BEAD-G Rule

Stuff to add...
  1. Fret 7 to "Horizontal" section
  2. Individual string stuff to "vertical
  3. Patterns and Rules section

If you would like a complete set of these exercises go to: "Learn The Fretboard Course".


*Frets for the natural notes on the E string.
**All the natural notes: A-B-C-D-E-F-G.

These exercises are taken from the PraxTrax.org Complete Fretboard Course.
More Free Exercises