I am concerned that most of the advice here is about learning the location of a note on the fretboard based on knowing some other note's location. While I do think this is ok for the speed of what you are talking about in a lesson, it is not fast enough for playing. I recommend writing down a series of notes on paper in no particular order or key, picking a five fret posiion on the fretboard, and then start with the first note, and then play each note in the series that is closest to your last note. Move your fretboard position and do it over. Write down another series of notes and do it again. This is closest to what you will be doing while playing or talking about chords or scales. You will be looking for a note in a particular zone on the fretboard. You want to be able to look at a sheet of paper for a note, or think it in your head, and then look at the fretboard and find it by sight without counting up or down. Since that is what you will be doing, your practice learning should be similar to that experience. I realize at first you will only know a few notes and you need to relate to those places and count up and down, but that is not your final goal. Your final goal is to have each note in your head. This is not something you will learn fast. Your teacher should not expect you to know all this now. Work on it for 15 minutes a day with your other stuff for...the next few years.
tim99.
