The fretboard can be a bit of a maze in the beginning. It is useful to see shapes and notes on the fretboard as soon as you can.
When you learn your first, open chord shapes it is useful to get to know where the Rootnote of each chord is. Start with the bassstrings first as a lot of chords start on the bass strings, especially those open chord, which any beginner will use. Some people may like the idea of having a fretboardchart around to see where the notes are.  It is a good idea to use that, but better is to make associations with chordshapes and particular chordnotes. As you get more experienced, your fretboardknowledge will grow, but you will need to make an effort, especially in the beginning.

Some of you may wonder why knowledge of the fretboard is so important?  It will help you when it comes to playing solos on the spot. You can use your chordshapes and play notes which fall into these shapes. These notes can then become part of your solo.
Fretboardknowledge will also help you with your songwriting: When you use a certain chord for a couple of bars you may want to shift that chordshape up to another place on the fretboard to create and inversion of the same chord. This chord will help you to give you another another sound.

After a few years of playing guitar on your own you may join a few friends to play music together, some of those people may be more experienced as you are. When it comes to playing songs they may say to you: “Play a D# instead of C in the first few bars of the intro” You would like to know where you can find that chord (or note) quickly to keep the flow going. Nothing worse in a situation like that when people say:”Oh I need to practise that a bit, I’ll have it next week”  You want to be able to play on the spot what is needed for the song to keep the momentum and the enthusiasm of the other guys going.

When you are on your own you can (and really should) spent time on your weaknesses with regards to the fretboard: You can make an effort to get to know notes on certain strings. Give yourself shortime goals like: “I will get to know all the notes on the D and G string within next few weeks” Get to know your own weaknesses and set yourself realistic goals to overcome them. In this way your can monitor the development of your own guitarplaying.

If you are a regular reader of this blog please let me know what you think of the articles. Which ones do you enjoy? What would you like to see more of? Are they helpful for what you need? You can use the contact page to give any feedback.

In the near future there will be more articles on pedals and amptones, I hope to get some videos done which will back up the articles.

Enjoy and hope to see you soon again.
Eddie