How to Understand the Guitar String Notes Easily

Understanding the notes on each guitar string is an important foundational skill that all beginner guitar players should learn. Without it you can’t really move past basic major and minor chords. You need to know the notes for scales, advanced chords and knowing where different barre chords are located.

In this post I’m going to explain how you can understand what note is on which string and where. First we’ll talk about the spacing between notes, then how you can find the notes on the guitar neck and finally an example using this information. Let’s get started.

The spacing between notes is denoted in steps. It’s either a half step or a whole step between each note A through G. The term step comes from the piano so we need to understand it in terms of the guitar. Don’t worry though it’s not difficult.

Each fret on the guitar neck is equal to one half step, so a full step on the guitar neck is two frets. Remember this because the concept of half and whole steps is important.

The spacing between each note is usually one whole step, or two frets. There are two exceptions how ever. Between the B and C notes there is only a half step and between the E and F notes there is a half step. This means that we only move up one fret to go from a B note to a C note or an E note to an F note.

Below is the explanation of the spacing between each of the 7 musical notes A through G in terms of steps and frets.

A to B = Full Step or Two Frets
B to C = Half step or One Fret
C to D = Full Step or Two Frets
D to E = Full Step or Two Frets
E to F = Half Step or One Fret
F to G = Full Step or Two Frets

How do we translate this to the guitar neck? The easiest way is to start with the strings. The top string is of course the E string, so if we start here we can show a quick example of how to find the notes on the neck.

The open E string is an E, what comes after E? It’s F, so remember this is one of the exceptions and there is only a half step between E and F. So moving up on fret brings us to the 1st fret on the Low E string.

Next comes G after F. The spacing, as per our list above, between an F and a G is one whole step. So move up two frets to the 3rd fret and there we have a G.

Let’s do one more, the note after G goes back around to the A. The space between the A and the G is one full step so we slide from the 3rd fret up to the 5th fret and we have an A.

Using this same idea of steps and fret movement we can find the notes on each guitar string starting from the string name. A quick refresher in case you forget what the string name are starting from the top and going down is: E. A, D, G, B and E.

This same method can be used starting with any string on the guitar. I suggest you work through each string one at a time learning and memorizing the different notes as they appear.

Take a few minutes to watch this video below where the same concept is explained and an example given for the top 3 strings. After watching the video grab your guitar and give this exercise a try. It takes a little time to memorize the notes on each string but remember practice makes perfect!

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