Tricks to memorize notes on fretboard

[SteveCS]

Can you imagine panist playing roots only?
Can you imagine guitar player playing roots only?

Then check out AC/DC's Cliff Williams Check any metal, punk, hardcore bassists. Majority doesn't need to reach beyond tabs.

YMMV

All Hail the lowest common denominators, and may they all win the race to the bottom. Thankfully, metal, punk and hardcore does not constitute any kind of majority, and even if it did, music is not a democracy. The OP is looking for a path to improvement. Who the hell are any of us to stand in opposition to that?

Edit: @sokolasty I just realised that you are the OP, so I'm not sure if my post makes sense any more. The post I quoted seems counter to your starter post so I must have been reading the quoted post incorrectly. But I'll leave this up as I think it still stands.

 

[txhawaii]

this video helped me. then i began to learn the modes (ionian, locrian, etc. and that accelerate my learning immediately. you don't need to learn every position overnight as it takes time. but it is pretty simple. its just like memorizing phone numbers. just write things out and look at a piano for help as well. there are plenty of free apps for that. the piano also pushed me over the top with understanding the fretboard.

 

[sokolasty]

All Hail the lowest common denominators, and may they all win the race to the bottom. Thankfully, metal, punk and hardcore does not constitute any kind of majority, and even if it did, music is not a democracy. The OP is looking for a path to improvement. Who the hell are any of us to stand in opposition to that?

Edit: @sokolasty I just realised that you are the OP, so I'm not sure if my post makes sense any more. The post I quoted seems counter to your starter post so I must have been reading the quoted post incorrectly. But I'll leave this up as I think it still stands.

It might seem, why not

The point is:
If one wants to play roots only in harmonically-not-very-demanding-genres, one might know very basics of first few frets of three strings and succeed.

However, if one wants to play more complex bass lines over several chords and changing keys, more knowledge is crucial.

So a basic bass player can live his years on stage not being able to tell a note on A string at 9th fret woken up at 3am within 100ms

 

[DaveAceofBass]

PS—find a good private teacher. I’m in Charlotte

PS—I’m the Adjunct Professor of Bass at Winthrop University, and I teach Orchestra, Guitar, Music Theory, and previously Band in the area. I’m at a large high school now, previously a charter school…and I play professionally throughout the area in multiple genres from jazz to classical to music theater and contemporary Christian music.

 

[Acoop]

I never thought it as memorizing notes on the fretboard. ... I think it's all in the fingering. ... I can watch a player play and see what works and what doesn't. Why because I did it to myself. Practising in front of a mirror is the best way to better correct faulty fingering. Which is the biggest hurdle. ... You're playing shouldn't faulter because you played a Bb instead of a B but it does faulter when your brain registers you've hit a wrong note or hurtle. ... As Miles says, "It's the note that follows it that tells if it's right or wrong." ... All players need to learn how to play from the bottom of the neck to the top in a complete sentence. ... Because music is a language of musical sentences strung together. ...

 

[WrapRough]

I never thought it as memorizing notes on the fretboard. ... I think it's all in the fingering. ... I can watch a player play and see what works and what doesn't. Why because I did it to myself. Practising in front of a mirror is the best way to better correct faulty fingering. Which is the biggest hurdle. ... You're playing shouldn't faulter because you played a Bb instead of a B but it does faulter when your brain registers you've hit a wrong note or hurtle. ... As Miles says, "It's the note that follows it that tells if it's right or wrong." ... All players need to learn how to play from the bottom of the neck to the top in a complete sentence. ... Because music is a language of musical sentences strung together. ...

I'm not sure this applies here. If someone says play root notes in a 251 progression in Cmaj, fingering is irrelevant. You need to know where the notes are.

 

[PTSD]

I sincerely can't imagine a pianist with many years experience on the piano asking on an internet forum about tricks to memorize the notes on the keyboard.

What is special about bassists that this kind of question comes up all the time?

I hope nobody perceives this question as offensive. I am genuinely interested in understanding why we seem to be wired so differently.

A bass, and a guitar , are not set up as intuitively as a piano. It isn't

AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#A

its more like

EFF#GG#A#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#...
AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EF.....
DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA...
GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD...

(you have to picture it as a grid to see it the way the instrument looks, you are playing up and down across the rows so you have to consider all of them and their relation to one another)

The reason is for the purpose of chords on the guitar and scales on the bass, it males them possible and easier, respectively.

 

[LBS-bass]

I'm not sure this applies here. If someone says play root notes in a 251 progression in Cmaj, fingering is irrelevant. You need to know where the notes are.

Patterns only get you so far. You still need to know your notes because those are your anchors.

If I'm on stage at a pickup gig with a blues guy who is calling chords or keys to me, I also need to know where the notes are. If he calls I-IV-V in Bb and I play in B, that's not going to win me any more gigs with him. Do I need to know where every Bb is on the neck? Probably not, but I can get a lot of mileage out of knowing where most of them are and how to get to them.

 

[James Collins]

A bass, and a guitar , are not set up as intuitively as a piano. It isn't

AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#A

its more like

EFF#GG#A#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#...
AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EF.....
DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA...
GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD...

Another question might be about what makes guitar type instruments so much more difficult to memorize the notes on than a bassoon, cello, steel drum, or harmonica.

How do bass players play their instrument for 5 years and then come around to memorizing the notes on the fingerboard. I agree it is a bit weird.

I think the reason has to deal with folk training on instruments where you learn songs by sound or charts that don't include the note names.

 

[micguy]

There are at least 2 skills that are relevant here. We've talked a lot about knowing where "F" is- if you're learning a tune, or somewhere getting through a gig by using a chord chart, that's a very useful skill.

Another very useful skill is knowing where the next note is - you hear it in your head, and your fingers automatically go there. You need to be able to play by ear, not by note names or Nashville numbers, to survive in some situations - that you get through practice, practice, practice. When notes start "falling under your fingers" - you don't know how it happens, but you start playing the right notes without conscious thought, then you're truly playing by ear.

I do pretty well at both of these, but if I had to pick one, it'd be ear training all day every day - that gets me through more situations (and gets me to a higher level of playing) than just knowing where the notes are.

 

[SteveCS]

...
...
Practising in front of a mirror is the best way to better correct faulty fingering.
...

...
...
If someone says play root notes in a 251 progression in Cmaj, fingering is irrelevant. You need to know where the notes are.

I think you are both right, but missing an important common factor. In the formal double-bass methods, the notes and fingerings are intrinsically linked through position. All three are studied and learned concurrently as part of the coherent system. Practicing in front of a mirror is used to develop the good posture essential for good fingering and secure intonation. This is rarely the case for the self-taught player or those that have never used the classical methods. I don't recall seeing a single electric bass method book that works through the positions, notes and fingerings the way the Bille or Simandl methods do. Nor any that suggest using a mirror for anything other than checking your hair! I think the OP is coming from the informal perspective.

 

[LBS-bass]

Another question might be about what makes guitar type instruments so much more difficult to memorize the notes on than a bassoon, cello, steel drum, or harmonica.

How do bass players play their instrument for 5 years and then come around to memorizing the notes on the fingerboard. I agree it is a bit weird.

I think the reason has to deal with folk training on instruments where you learn songs by sound or charts that don't include the note names.

Even though I did have a fair amount of musical training in grade school, early on I played my bass almost strictly by ear. All I needed was a basic understanding of intervals (which I already had through sightreading melodies for violin and voice) and - this was probably key - a pretty good ear. I was learning songs, not exercises, so if I knew where the song started I could pretty much take it from there to learn the all of the subsequent movement in the bass line.

The reason this was so do-able is the way the bass is tuned. There's no weird G to B string interval like there is on a six-string guitar. I could start anywhere on the neck almost and play the same patterns, and a fifth would always be the same distance away from my root. An octave was always an octave. Minor versus major thirds I could hear and play according to what my ear told me to play, so no big deal. Etc.

It wasn't until later that I started pickup gigs where I was expected to read chord charts or respond to chords being called that I started really concentrating on learning where all the notes were. Can't quickly move to arpeggiate a chord if you don't know where your root is. Of course, all that ultimately made me a much better and more valuable player, but it didn't come along initially, because at first I just had songs to learn by ear and a job to do.

I think an important point is that for some of us necessity will always be the mother of invention. I would never discourage anyone from wanting to learn more about how to play. I also recognize that everyone starts where they are and is also just where they are today. So not everyone is at that place where becoming a more utilitarian player who is able to step into a chart-reading situation and hold ground is necessary or even a thought for them yet. But if that's something you want to be able to do, grab some charts and start figuring that stuff out.

What I will say is this. I have never read tab, don't like it, to me it's the musical equivalent of painting-by-numbers in the sense that you will get nothing of value from it beyond mechanical instruction of the most basic sort. You will eventually find that you have to move beyond it, no matter how good you sound, if you want to participate in a broader range of musical activities. So I'd encourage people starting out to just bear that in mind.

 

[MVE]

I never thought it as memorizing notes on the fretboard. ... I think it's all in the fingering. ... I can watch a player play and see what works and what doesn't. Why because I did it to myself. Practising in front of a mirror is the best way to better correct faulty fingering. Which is the biggest hurdle. ... You're playing shouldn't faulter because you played a Bb instead of a B but it does faulter when your brain registers you've hit a wrong note or hurtle. ... As Miles says, "It's the note that follows it that tells if it's right or wrong." ... All players need to learn how to play from the bottom of the neck to the top in a complete sentence. ... Because music is a language of musical sentences strung together. ...

Miles was wrong!!!
Well, he may have been right for him. If the trumpet player (or any soloist) plays the wrong note, its jazzy and hip.
If the bass player plays the wrong note, its a different freakin’ song.

 

[Aussie Player]

Learn the piano first. Learn the half steps and whole steps and the names of the sharps and flats. Then make a neck diagram after you understand that. There is always a half step (one fret distance) between E and F and B and C. All other natural notes that move by step are a whole step (two frets apart). Start there. Learn to play in positions…learn what notes are under every finger in each position. Memorize where the octaves are. Then learn where all the notes are…like all Es, all Ds, all Gs, all Bbs, etc.

I believe this to be correct and have held this opinion for many years.
My greatest influences being Andy Fraser, Jack Bruce, John Paul Jones and John Entwhistle were all classically trained, all possibly with the exception of Entwhistle (French Horn) on piano. Hence, Entwhistles 3 finger strumming and note picking style.

I also note that many piano's had a very sight subtle growl on the bass notes if you really listen and that seems to have carried over to the tones these 3 in particular chose with 2 of them using the EB3. The Jazz bass of JPY also demonstrates this growl characteristic though because he was a multi instrumentalist, I would not expect him to have dug that deeply into the instrument itself.

 

[James Collins]

Even though I did have a fair amount of musical training in grade school, early on I played my bass almost strictly by ear. All I needed was a basic understanding of intervals (which I already had through sightreading melodies for violin and voice) and - this was probably key - a pretty good ear. I was learning songs, not exercises, so if I knew where the song started I could pretty much take it from there to learn the all of the subsequent movement in the bass line.

The reason this was so do-able is the way the bass is tuned. There's no weird G to B string interval like there is on a six-string guitar. I could start anywhere on the neck almost and play the same patterns, and a fifth would always be the same distance away from my root. An octave was always an octave. Minor versus major thirds I could hear and play according to what my ear told me to play, so no big deal. Etc.

It wasn't until later that I started pickup gigs where I was expected to read chord charts or respond to chords being called that I started really concentrating on learning where all the notes were. Can't quickly move to arpeggiate a chord if you don't know where your root is. Of course, all that ultimately made me a much better and more valuable player, but it didn't come along initially, because at first I just had songs to learn by ear and a job to do.

I think an important point is that for some of us necessity will always be the mother of invention. I would never discourage anyone from wanting to learn more about how to play. I also recognize that everyone starts where they are and is also just where they are today. So not everyone is at that place where becoming a more utilitarian player who is able to step into a chart-reading situation and hold ground is necessary or even a thought for them yet. But if that's something you want to be able to do, grab some charts and start figuring that stuff out.

What I will say is this. I have never read tab, don't like it, to me it's the musical equivalent of painting-by-numbers in the sense that you will get nothing of value from it beyond mechanical instruction of the most basic sort. You will eventually find that you have to move beyond it, no matter how good you sound, if you want to participate in a broader range of musical activities. So I'd encourage people starting out to just bear that in mind.

Makes sense. I come from playing classical guitar as my early background. So the B string never felt weird to me. It makes more sense to think of the B and high E strings like the chanterelle on a lute. For guitar composition, those two strings often carry the melody, but even when not the melody, they carry a different voice than the bass strings. So i think of it like having the low B and E strings raised in pitch and moved to that side of the fingerboard to make playing in a position a bit easier although you end up learning a couple different shapes as a result. To better explain what I mean, maybe think of a 7 string guitar with a low B. Then the B and E strings are just two octaves higher duplicates of the low strings.

Anyway, I'm off topic arguing that the B string isn't weird for really no reason.

 

[LBS-bass]

Anyway, I'm off topic arguing that the B string isn't weird for really no reason.

But it's interesting to hear this. From a pattern perspective it's weird, but perhaps that is the only one

 

[PTSD]

Another question might be about what makes guitar type instruments so much more difficult to memorize the notes on than a bassoon, cello, steel drum, or harmonica.

How do bass players play their instrument for 5 years and then come around to memorizing the notes on the fingerboard. I agree it is a bit weird.

I think the reason has to deal with folk training on instruments where you learn songs by sound or charts that don't include the note names.

Oh yeah, of course. the type of music has a lot to do with it.

i was answering just the technical aspects, obviously a piano is easier to understand the notes lay out than on a stringed instrument, that's just a fact, thats why they teach music on the piano in an academic setting, whether you are studying voice or saxophone or whatever else.

But yeah, you are gonna find a lot more self taught musicians when you are playing rock and roll. And I can tell you, in 28 years of playing rock and roll, I have met a lot of really good musicians who couldn't read sheet music to save their lives and knew very little about theory. In fact, I know its gonna sound like sacrilege to you , but as someone who plays rock n roll and has a few years experience with theory (i've taken academic music courses in college and took lessons on piano as a kid, but as a rock n roll bass player, I don't read music, and only use some theory knowledge to compose for a band, though I could do it by ear almost as well) my opinion is that theory is more of a hindrance than it is helpful. I would never give a young or a new musician that advice, I wouldn't want to discourage them of really learning all they can about music, but to me , speaking only for myself, music is an abstract endeavor, and theory is technical, and its very dense body of knowledge that doesn't come easy - its not easy to learn by any stretch, its about as easy to learn as Latin, there is nothing intuitive about it. Music has technical aspects, how to play it i mean, but once you've mastered your instrument, it should be purely abstract, all about creativity. In my opinion, a musician cant really even be called a good musician if he isnt creative - i dont care a bit about who's song you can play, wood-shedding is for kids and newbies, if you want my respect show me what you have written, that or improvise, otherwise, I'm not impressed by who's song you can memorize.

And for that reason, for the sake of creativity, theory kinda sucks, it makes music linear, it robs it of its abstract essence . Theory is plenty useful, and I use it, but to over emphasize theory to a new player stifles his creative mind and gets him thinking about music the wrong way. That is just my opinion, Im sure lots of people, maybe all people, disagree, but the best guitarists ive played with have been self taught and they are good because of how creative they are and because they have a good ear. The guitar players who can play you so and so's solo, etc usually suck and never lasted long in any band ive been in.

Ok I will shut up now, I know nobody wants to hear about my opinion , Im sorry. you just got me onto a tangent.

 

[SteveCS]

Oh yeah, of course. the type of music has a lot to do with it.

i was answering just the technical aspects, obviously a piano is easier to understand the notes lay out than on a stringed instrument, that's just a fact, thats why they teach music on the piano in an academic setting, whether you are studying voice or saxophone or whatever else.

But yeah, you are gonna find a lot more self taught musicians when you are playing rock and roll. And I can tell you, in 28 years of playing rock and roll, I have met a lot of really good musicians who couldn't read sheet music to save their lives and knew very little about theory. In fact, I know its gonna sound like sacrilege to you , but as someone who plays rock n roll and has a few years experience with theory (i've taken academic music courses in college and took lessons on piano as a kid, but as a rock n roll bass player, I don't read music, and only use some theory knowledge to compose for a band, though I could do it by ear almost as well) my opinion is that theory is more of a hindrance than it is helpful. I would never give a young or a new musician that advice, I wouldn't want to discourage them of really learning all they can about music, but to me , speaking only for myself, music is an abstract endeavor, and theory is technical, and its very dense body of knowledge that doesn't come easy - its not easy to learn by any stretch, its about as easy to learn as Latin, there is nothing intuitive about it. Music has technical aspects, how to play it i mean, but once you've mastered your instrument, it should be purely abstract, all about creativity. In my opinion, a musician cant really even be called a good musician if he isnt creative - i dont care a bit about who's song you can play, wood-shedding is for kids and newbies, if you want my respect show me what you have written, that or improvise, otherwise, I'm not impressed by who's song you can memorize.

And for that reason, for the sake of creativity, theory kinda sucks, it makes music linear, it robs it of its abstract essence . Theory is plenty useful, and I use it, but to over emphasize theory to a new player stifles his creative mind and gets him thinking about music the wrong way. That is just my opinion, Im sure lots of people, maybe all people, disagree, but the best guitarists ive played with have been self taught and they are good because of how creative they are and because they have a good ear. The guitar players who can play you so and so's solo, etc usually suck and never lasted long in any band ive been in.

Ok I will shut up now, I know nobody wants to hear about my opinion , Im sorry. you just got me onto a tangent.

With that attitude I doubt too many folks will give two hoots for your respect.

 

[WrapRough]

i dont care a bit about who's song you can play, wood-shedding is for kids and newbies, if you want my respect show me what you have written, that or improvise, otherwise, I'm not impressed by who's song you can memorize.

Do you apply this bizarre thinking to all styles of music?

For example, classical musicians are just memorizing someone's music. Are they not worthy of respect?

 

[yberwaffe]

Do you apply this bizarre thinking to all styles of music?

For example, classical musicians are just memorizing someone's music. Are they not worthy of respect?

They are good at playing the classics, but how many of those virtuosos have created new compositions ?