Guitar Fretboard Notes: Interactive Trainer
Every note on the guitar neck, up to the 12th fret. Click a note name below to highlight it everywhere on the fretboard, or press any dot to hear nothing and see everything - this tool is about learning positions, not playing audio. Use it for five minutes a day and the neck stops being a mystery.
How to read it: rows are the six strings (thickest low E on top, thinnest high e on the bottom). Columns are frets 0 (the open string) through 12. Orange dots are the highlighted note; shaded cells are the open strings.
The pattern that unlocks the neck
- The musical alphabet runs A B C D E F G, then repeats. Between most letters there is one extra fret (the sharp/flat). The only exceptions: B to C and E to F are neighbors with no fret between them.
- The 12th fret is the same note as the open string, one octave up. Everything past it repeats.
- String names from thick to thin: E A D G B E. Learn those six first - every other note is counted from them.
- Handy anchor: the 5th fret of any string (except the G string, where it is the 4th fret) is the same note as the next thinner string played open. That is how you tune by ear in Lesson 2.
Two-minute drill
- Pick a natural note (C, D, E, F, G, A, or B) and highlight it above.
- On your real guitar, find and play that note on the low E string. Then the A string. Then D.
- When that feels easy, say each note name out loud as you play it. Two minutes a day beats one long cram session.
Where to go next
- Guitar chord chart - put those notes to work in real chords.
- How to read chord diagrams - if the grids on chord pages look confusing.
- All beginner lessons - the full free course.