If you’re learning to play the guitar, you’ll likely have realized that there have never been more learning resources available than the current digital age. You’ve got online videos, virtual courses, and all sorts of mobile apps that can help you work towards the next level.
I grew up in the ‘90s and therefore did not have access to these kinds of resources, but I used something that I think is even better – blank guitar fretboards. They’re easy to use, versatile, and best of all you can use them without an internet connection.
If you’ve never heard of blank guitar fretboards and would like to know what I am talking about, read on to find out more. I’ll be explaining exactly what they are, how to find them, and what you can use them for.
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When I first heard about blank guitar fretboards, I assumed that they were physical guitar fretboards that contain no frets or inlays. I couldn’t have been more wrong, they are completely different.
Blank guitar fretboards are essentially illustrated charts that represent a guitar fretboard. Usually, the chart will begin at the nut of the neck and will cover the first twelve frets (i.e. an octave). It is as simple as that – it’s just a twelve-by-six grid, illustrated to represent the distances between each fret across each guitar string.
The purpose of these charts is to aid in the practice of guitar playing. They are blank and therefore are to be filled in by the guitarist who is using them and can be used to represent all manner of different things.
Music Paper Notebook
As I already mentioned, the key to these charts is the fact that they are blank. Guitar students can fill in the grids either on their computer or with pen and paper as a way to help them remember information.
These charts helped me immensely when I was learning the instrument, and I never would have imagined that I would still be using them over 20 years later, yet I am. Let’s investigate exactly how you can start to use blank guitar fretboards.
I had already learned the placement of the 88 notes of a piano by the time I picked up my first guitar, so I was pretty intimidated when I realized that the instrument had six strings, each of which had 20 frets – that’s 40 additional notes!
The Mandolin Fretboard
Not only was the number of notes higher than that of a piano, but the patterns in which they increase in pitch across several strings simply did not make sense to me.
I was visiting my local Guitar Center one day when I found a guitar practice book containing blank fretboard charts. I’ve never been able to find the specific book again in shops, but it was almost identical to the recently published King’s Music House Blank Guitar Fretboard 24 Fret Book.
My dad commented that I could write the name of each note on each fret and use the chart to help me in the future. He bought me the book, and I quickly got to work on filling in the charts.
A4 Guitar Fretboard Blank Sheet Music, Six String Fretboard, Jotter Pa
This helped me hugely, I had been struggling a lot with the notation system and it helped me get to the point where I could more or less name any note on a guitar. However, if you’re a seasoned guitarist, don’t get the idea that these charts aren’t going to be useful to you.
Have you ever tried out a new tuning and felt completely disorientated? Some guitar tunings are weird, and it can quickly become confusing to remember which strings you detuned and what notes belong at which frets.
Don’t be ashamed to use blank fretboard charts to memorize the notations of an unusual tuning. If they helped me learn the notes of standard tuning, then they’ll help you learn the notes of Drop C and beyond.
Bass Fretboard Diagram Music Notebook Grafik Von Creative Studio · Creative Fabrica
A final thing that I want to mention is that you do not need to go beyond twelve frets. I was initially a bit disappointed that my blank fretboard charts only included the first twelve frets, and I started cutting and gluing charts together to make up for the 20 notes on my fretboard.
The reason that only twelve frets are shown is that this represents an octave. The notes that you have filled in will be the same if you move to the twelfth fret, except for the fact that you may be missing the final two notes.
Even if you find a 20 note blank fretboard, don’t bother filling the whole thing out as it will just be a waste of valuable ink! Learning Scales
Guitar Fretboard Paper
After a couple of weeks of staring at my filled-in fretboard charts, I could finally have my father point to any fret on any string and name him the note. It was a great feeling and my guitar teacher was impressed, so much so that he suggested it was a good time for me to begin learning scales.
This was a whole different kettle of fish. My teacher would list the notes in the A Major scale for example, and I could confidently move my fingers to the correct notes. However, the moment that I returned home to practice alone, I couldn’t remember the notes that built up the scale.
I explained this to my guitar teacher the next week, and he suggested that I begin to fill in the note patterns of scales that he taught me into new blank fretboard charts. It was a great idea, and not only did it help me finally learn the A Major scale, but also the A Minor and pentatonic.
Pdf) A Genetic Algorithm For The Automatic Generation Of Playable Guitar Tablature
However, I made a pretty silly mistake by filling in a fretboard chart for every different minor and major scale. If you already know these scales then you will understand why that was stupid – the finger pattern for each variation of a scale, whether it’s the A Major or C# Major, will always be the same. I had just wasted eleven blank fretboard charts when I only really needed to use one.
The best thing about this blank fretboard scale is the fact that they are almost infinitely useful. Sure, you might know all of the basic scales, but have you ever tried to learn the fifth mode of the melodic minor scale (otherwise known as Mixolydian b6)?
No matter what level you are at as a guitarist, there is almost always another scale or mode that you will need to brush up on, and blank fretboard charts are there to help you.
Graph Paper: Plain Graph Paper
It’s important to note that there are alternative forms of blank fretboards to print out books. I must admit that these aren’t my cup of tea, I’ve always found that they can confuse a
And get in the way. However, I’ve also known people to use such tools to their advantage, so it all comes down to personal taste.
After learning the notes and basic minor and major scales of the guitar, I was ready to move on to something new. I was aware that chords were made up of several different notes from a scale as I had learned this in my piano lessons, but I wasn’t confident enough to work the chords out for myself.
Guitar Charts Browser Page
By the time I realized that I could use blank fretboard charts to help me memorize chords, I had already completed the book and had to purchase a new one. This time I went for Jirakit Somame’s 6 String Guitar Neck Diagram Notebook, an equally effective alternative to my original workbook! I decided that this would be my chord book, and I cannot explain how useful it was to me!
Using just the first few frets of each fretboard chart, you can represent any open chord by writing the names of the notes on the appropriate frets. It isn’t about memorizing the notes anymore, but memorizing which notes make up which chords.
This isn’t only useful for open chords though – blank fretboard charts are twelve frets long, so you can also log barre chords or any other type of chord. Doing this massively increased the speed at which I was able to learn new chords, but more importantly, the charts helped me recognize and understand the shape and structure of chords in relation to their scales.
Free Online Graph Paper / Asymmetric And Specialty Grid Paper Pdfs
The only problem with doing this is that you will end up using just a few frets of a blank fretboard chart to represent a single chord. However, I used to combat this by writing chord progressions (sequences of excellent chord combinations) in a single fretboard chart. Four chords were generally the limit, but I still use this technique today when I come up with a nice chord combination.
This may look a bit confusing as you will be writing open chords that begin on the fifth fret and beyond which is not technically correct. However, I find that if you simply make a note of what you are doing and indicate that all chords are to be played from the first frets, it should be pretty easy to understand.
Now that you know how and why blank guitar fretboards are
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