The Notefinder Exercise
One of the first technical challenges the beginning bass player has to master is learning the notes on the fingerboard.
The Note Finder exercise
is an incredibly simple yet incredibly powerful solution to this
problem. Do it for 5 or 10 minutes a day and soon you’ll know the
names and locations of all the notes on the fingerboard.
The Note Finder Exercise
You know the names of the Open Strings right? From low to high (or thickest to thin if you want to think of it another way) they are tuned E, A, D and G.
The note finder exercise takes each note in turn, starts from the lowest example of that note on the E string, then plays every repeat of that note one by one.
To start, say ‘E’ to yourself and sound the open E string. Then play the next ‘E’ an octave higher in pitch but still on the E string (located at the 12th fret see the fretboard diagrams).
Then find the lowest pitched ‘E’ on the A string and play that (located at the 7th fret) and then the octave above that (19th fret).
Then find the lowest pitched ‘E’ on the D string (2nd fret) and then the octave above that (14th fret).
Finally move to the G string and play the lowest ‘E’ note there (9th fret) and the octave above that (at the very last fret on a 21 fret bass).
Then repeat the exercise, but descending from the highest pitched ‘E’ note on your bass, right down to the low, open E string.
When you’ve finished with ‘E’. repeat the methodology above but starting from the next note in pitch located at the 1st fret on the E string, the ‘F’ note.
When you’ve done F, ascend chromatically (one step at a time) until you reach Eb at the 11th fret of the E string.
If you do this every time
you practice you will learn the location of all the notes on your
fretboard in a relatively short space of time.
A
more detailed version of the lesson is available as a PDF file.
Either left click to open the lesson in a new window or right click
to download to your hard drive. The lesson contains variations on
the above and suggestions how to use a metronome to really test your mastery of the fingerboard.
Also
included with PDF are individual fingerboard diagrams for every note
for you to print out to help you get started mastering your bass!
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