Building Your Fretboard Knowledge – Part 1

The guitar is an overwhelming instrument. At first, it seems that there are only a handful of chords to play most songs. However, after learning a few songs, and then a few more, and then more, our understanding of the fretboard seems completely inadequate for ongoing growth. Therefore, I’d like to share with you the chords and corresponding pentatonic scales (in separate posts) that will aid in growing your fretboard knowledge.

Know The Fretboard Through Chords

The chord charts below use the root note of “A”. All of these chords are closed position chords. This means that none of them contain open strings. This allows us to play and move them to anywhere on the fretboard to achieve the correct sound and no need to learn a new shape. You will notice that they ascend up the fretboard.

The main purpose of learning these shapes is to help in the visualization of the fingerboard. This is how we increase our fretboard knowledge. Seeing the shapes will help you learn anything on the guitar faster and easier. In the beginning, you will not be able to play all the given chords. However, you need to learn to “see” them on the instrument. This is, by far, the most important part of this learning.


After getting comfortable seeing and playing these shapes, every student should change the root note to the seven non-accidental keys (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G). This means finding the B on the sixth string and then playing the first shape given above. The B note should now be in the same place as the A note on the diagram and the entire shape will have shifted up the fretboard. The rest of the notes will change as well but this should be not focused on too much. It is much more important to focus on the root of each chord.

To say the above another way, make the first A major shape given above. Then slide the entire chord up two frets. Now, finger 3 will be sitting on a B (the 7th fret of the sixth string). You are now playing a B major chord using the initial shape. Continue to work through the entire set of chords using the B note for the root of each chord. You will undoubtedly learn the notes of the fretboard by doing this.

If this seems daunting, then don’t worry. Everyone who begins to move beyond the basics finds it daunting. Move ahead slowly and continually work on “seeing” the chords on the fretboard. After, or while, you work on learning these chord shapes, begin working on the corresponding pentatonic scale shapes. I’ll cover these in a future post (Building Your Fretboard Knowledge – Part 2).

If you’d like to get all of these on a PDF printout, then click below to download them from Gumroad. They are free but if you’re feeling generous, consider paying something to help me keep this work up. Thanks.

Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.