What are you guys' thoughts on learning the note names of every fret of every string?

As a bass player of 30+ years I've always felt slightly guilty that I only know a handful of note names lower down the neck but I've managed to get by using shapes. I think my very early move to 6-string bass probably broke something in my brain and I suspect I've also subconsciously used the excuse that I'm a piano/keys player really (my first instrument - now I do know all the note names there but there's only 12 of them!) Maybe I should have picked one instrument and stuck with it...? NEVER!!!

So do you guys know them all, or just a few strategic ones? Have you found any handy techniques for learning them?

Cheers!
Nick

*or "youse guyses" as I've heard far too often for my liking here in Scotland, not even kidding.

Me personally, I gotta know where the notes are. I know 'em down cold on the instruments that I play. And when I embark on learning a new instrument that's the first order of business. I don't find that memorizing geometric shapes is all that efficient, but that's just me.

I know that when I first got ahold of a Stick, I ended up jumping around a bunch of different tunings for a while (lots of reasons for that, but it is what it is) - the result being that I didn't get too familiar with the note location and was sort of just fumbling around for quite some time.

I mean, even in a teacher/student relationship it's so much more efficient if the teacher asks/tells you to play a Bb and you know where to play it. Simplified instructions. Otherwise it's "Ok, this is the first note in the song, it's a Bb..." student fumbles around looking for the closest note to that one that he knows, plays it... Teacher goes "nope not that one, it's higher..." Student attempts to "ear" his way through it and pitch match - finally gets it. But while this is happening, the clock is ticking and precious moments of lesson time are draining away... But hey, maybe that IS the lesson for some folks, and if that's the case, cool!

Jamming with folks is so much easier if they know the language. Sure, you can bypass that a bit by doing some homework and just showing up with the parts learned, but what if there's a discrepancy in a section of the tune at practice? "Hey bro - you are playing a C9 there, but the chord is actually an F#7" and if one guy can't find an F#, well that conversation starts to eat into the practice in a quick hurry.

For me, Stick became a lot more enjoyable - easier - by knowing the instrument. I tried a geometric approach but it just isn't my thing... Whatever works I guess!

(And of course - it takes a bit of time and effort to learn where those notes are. Maybe your strategy IS to start with geometry, then name THAT... Lots of different ways to go about it!)

Interesting - good reply!

Yes, I definitely want to be able to find notes quickly but the job of learning 12 strings times 24 frets equals 288 notes is quite a scary one! Do you recall how you learned them?

Thanks,
Nick

I'll be quite honest, I have no idea where the notes are on any instrument outside of a few names of strings, since I play by ear as opposed to notes or written down music BUT to me it is ultra important to know your fingerboard inside and out - know all the octaves, know all the relationships between and with [in my case...] the sounds that are made at each fret location.

I realize this could be viewed as a huge handicap, but for me when I spent quite a bit of time in studios in NYC during the early/mid 1990s, the fact that I saw and heard things from a different approach, a different angle - since my playing would be based on what I thought sounded right, or what I thought would work - as opposed to knowing the correct notes - this enabled me to have, so I was told anyway... a very adventurous, original style on the electric bass, which also displayed much feeling and emotion.

These days, I love playing my mid 1980s Ironwood, in Classic tuning - but as to what I am doing with it, that I could not tell you - except that to me it sounds most pleasing

So, my answer to you is if you want to learn the notes, if you see yourself wanting to play covers... then this is probably necessary, but to me if you are seeking to be a player with a more unique, individual original voice, then to me anyway... I think it's more important to really know your instrument inside and out from a sonic standpoint vs written/notes/etc.... and don't be afraid to think outside the box !!

Either way, Play and Have Fun.

I am not a professor, so take it for what it's worth.

Roots 4ths 5ths octaves unisons chord and scale patterns transposition.

I guess if you learn c major, c minor scales, modes, chords, and patterns, you should be able to find any note on the board.

the problem I have is which finger to use, and what pattern to use, because there are infinite possibilities of how to move your fingers depending on what note you want to hit with which finger, and which way you want to move on the fretboard, which hand do you want to assign the bass, which one do you want to assign the melody, how can I use both hands together, instead of running a bass with my left and running a Melody with my right. How can I blend both sides of the board as smoothly as possible,
Infinite possibilities, Limited only by your imagination!

Hey Nick, did you just get your Stick, did it come with Emmett Chapman's book Free Hands? You should have the book. It's the insight in the conceptualization of playing method into the instrument built to facilitate said method. (phew!) It all starts there. Seriously. The Man threw out years of playing method realizing this instrument, go with that and go from there. Start at the Beginning. (And learn the note names...)

There’s good reference materials published by Steve Adelson and Greg Howard t
(Stickology and The Stick Book, respectively) that will help you develop strategies to learn the notes. Once you learn the the notes in one section of the board (say the 12th fret) you can mathematically deduce others, e.g., half step up, or one fret up from B is C. Learn sections as reference points, then find the other notes. Buy both books too and study the note diagrams

Well - what I did is this ;
I have a "Key of the Day" strategy, and I always cycle through my "keys" in 4ths. Just a habit from music school, a system I use to provide a framework for practice, lots of other things in 4ths too... but anyways;

1) I started just finding every note, on every string in Cycle of 4ths.
CFBbEb AbDbGbB EADG
One could just do it chromatically I suppose, but I got a lot out of having some sort of intervalic system. Besides, the 4ths/5ths relationship on the stick is huge. The "Dots" are a 4th apart, etc etc...

2) Then I graduated to major and minor triads. Up and down each string.
CEG FAC BbDF EbGBb AbCEb DbFAb GbBbDb BD#F# EG#B AC#E DF#A GBD
CEbG FAbC BbDbF EbGbBb AbCbEb DbFbAb GbBbbDb BDF# EGB ACE DFA GBbD And obviously there might be better enharmonic spellings, but I like to think of them this way as a starting point.

3) After that, it was major 7th and minor 7th arps, again - single string.

The whole thing took me about a month on the Stick, but I have this sort of thing dialled in on guitar and bass. Violin and lap steel too. It really worked out well for me in mirrored 4ths - there was a TON of cross-string overlap that I started to see as I was going through the single strings.

I then spent quite a bit of time working on real-time reading, and it helped immensely. And whenever a certain group of notes is kicking my ass it's usually due to a lack of familiarity so I now just hone in on problem areas, be it a certain scale or arpeggio/chord thing etc and dig in in a similar way.

DBro had a pretty cool idea of just playing into a tuner and sort of playing a guessing game with one's self. I used to do flashcards quite a bit too.

I think that if one wants to learn the notes, maybe it's best to just knuckle down and avoid the shortcuts and "easy-ways" and just go for it. There is no substitute for actual knowledge. Good luck, I hope it works out for you!

I managed to avoid dedicating myself to this in the 16 years or so I've focused on the Stick (knowing the low notes on the lowest 3 bass strings, doing most of the rest by chord/scale patterns and relationships), but with my recent interest in learning keyboard music I have more of a desire to really learn this. I've also been studying some classical guitar this year so I've been thinking about techniques to memorize fretboard note positions.

The cool thing about the Stick inlays is the way it helps to visualize relationships. If you learn the notes on all the strings between two inlays, it's very similar an inlay up or down, just with the strings shifted one direction or another.

On my mirrored 4ths tuning, the note names are the same one inlay apart (so frets 2 to 7 on the bass side are the same notes as 7 to 12 on the melody side, just an octave apart and going different directions).

I use a chart like this to study, created with the FretBoard Pro app (I added middle C circles):
. The melody strings are the same as Matched Reciprocal.