I made a critical error in skipping power chords in my early lessons and now am suffering that I didn’t learn the notes of at least the E and A strings. Well, I have been playing my heart out to tons of Ramones and Green Day stuff. It REALLY works the forearm and hand out
wow! I really should’ve been doing this the whole time. Okay, so now I am able to mostly find the powerchords without looking and can mostly makr them ring perfectly and I am learning these strings pretty well, but that leaves three more.
The reason that I am reaching out today is to sort of jump ahead on my lessons to ask if there is something like a power chord (perhaps this is where barre chords are headed?) which will teach me these notes on the other three strings? I do best to learn by playing songs but is there an excersize to help learn these notes on the neck? I tried the Justin app thing but there appears to be an error for Android and I also think that it may not be the best aid for me. Also, how important is it to learn the full notes of the neck? Is it an absolute requirement to my moving to the third grade because I have been in a holding pattern for a while. Not time wasted as my skills are really improving but I want to start to spread my wimgs a bit more.
You can play power chords on the D string.
Root on D, 5th on G, octave root on B but a fret higher.
Sounds really cool. A bit awkward perhaps if you don’t like using your pinky finger but that’s a good practice too.
The intro riff to the “You’ve got another thing coming” by Judas Priest is a good practice.
John, agree, this my concentration at the moment, learning the notes on the fretboard. Power chords and major and minor triads is forcing me to learn the notes.
I am in no position to give advice but Another exercise I am including is to say the notes out loud as I play scales. I felt comfortable with some major in minor pentatonic scales but didn’t really know what the notes were.
I’m not fully through with the memorization practice but I found this training routine where you do a string a week for a few minutes (octaves, fifth, fourth) pretty good:
Also this seems like a fun game to test yourself in time: Fretboard Fly
I’ve kind of skimmed through grade 3 before choosing my own path, but I don’t recall any need to know the notes other than on the E and A strings. And I don’t recall Justin ever saying it was a requirement for the next phase.
So I wouldn’t let that stop you from progressing to Grade 3.
No doubt I will want to learn all the notes someday, but I have not found it a limitation so far.