Time to start learning the notes on the guitar fretboard! Let's start with notes in the first five frets :)
View the full lesson at Notes In The First Five Frets | JustinGuitar
About how long should it take to have these “down”? Just the first five frets, where you can name them from memory pretty quickly.
Also, I downloaded the note trainer app. It’s awesome. One suggestion: it would be nice to limit the active frets, so you can concentrate on the first five (to mirror the lessons) rather than the entire fretboard.
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Hello @o0Loiter0o and welcome to the community. Feel free to pop in to the Community Hub and introduce yourself there. Community Hub - JustinGuitar Community
How long? An unanswerable question really. You should know a good number from the open chords - their roots and other notes. But full and fluent and fast recall may take a little while to build. Not years. Weeks and months.
Cheers 
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Thanks for the reply! I’ve been working on the first three frets in my spare time and am going to build from there. You raise a good point about the open chords - I’ve never taken the time to write out the notes in each one. I’m going to diagram them the next chance I get.
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There are some great “Random Note Picker” websites you can find with a quick Google search that help with these excercises a ton
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I tried to install the note trainer app but the link led to the time trainer app. Is the note trainer on that app as well as the time trainer? I wanted to ask before I bought it.
Is that right? I know quite a few chords now but pretty sure I couldn’t name the notes that make up the chord. I could work them out of course but that would take time.
Where are the two A notes in A major and A minor?
Where are the two C notes in C major?
Where are the two D notes in D major and D minor?
Where are the three E notes in E major and E minor?
Where are the three F notes in F-barre or the two F notes in F mini-barre?
Where are the three G notes in G major?
What are the open strings?
If you can answer those you have nearly all natural notes to fret 3.
Plus, fret 5 on all strings apart from the 3rd string matches then next thinner open string. 6th string fret 5 = 5th string open.
On the 3rd string it is 4th fret 3rd string = 2nd string open.
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I can answer the questions but couldn’t do them quickly and would need some time to work out the notes. It may sound daft but I have never really associated chords with individual notes. They are just finger positions used to form the chord before you strum.
Do I need to know the notes of each chord?
I have started to use JG’s note trainer app and can work out the notes but it takes time and I’m wondering do actually need to learn this? What is the benefit?
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Stuart, I think you and I are in similar parts of the course, so I’ll share my thoughts about it.
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I don’t recall Justin discussing much the notes in the chords we’ve learned, which has surprised and somewhat disappointed me. I assume he’s avoided it so as not to turn off people who don’t want to know about “theory” at the beginning.
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I’m very interested in learning the notes in the chords, the notes on the fretboard, and as much theory as I can absorb, so I’ve been pursuing those things elsewhere in parallel to Justin’s lessons.
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Whether and how it benefits you really depends on your goals. I think if you hope one day to improvise or develop your own music (even simple riffs), then it would be useful to know the intervals between notes and possibly the notes’ names, too. If you ever consider playing with other people, having the common language would be a huge plus.
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Justin has the best music theory course for guitar on the internet. It not free but he does have to feed his family.
PS the first 2 grads are free.
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Yes, of course! Thank you for the reminder. In fact, this topic is attached to PMT Grade 2, Module 2.
I completed the first two grades and looked at the summaries of the others. Aside from not having the time to invest during the summer, I haven’t been sure how much of the rest will be new to me. This fall, I’ll likely do a month’s subscription to run through them and find out whether a longer term commitment makes sense for me.
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If that doesn’t work for you:
A and D (Agile Digits), which you should already know
Goats
Can
Eat
Anything
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Have you covered Module 8 C major scale?
All natural notes from open strings to fret 3 are there.
As you work through PMT you will encounter all that you need.
@Stuartw put the note trainer aside until you know some / all of this.
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Yes. Well passed that now! Didn’t really take note of the notes to be honest, just finger locations for playing the scale.
Do you mean the notes in the first five frets? I do know these in that I can work them out, just not quickly.
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Agreed. As I noted chords are just finger positions for strumming.
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You will benefit from knowing them, not having to work them out.
Learn them.
Look at the C major scale diagram above alongside holding down all the open position minor and major chords.
Figure out the notes in those chords.
For the essential chords of A, Am, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F and G you will have lots of natural notes and a few sharp notes. No notes that you would call flat.
I’m currently using the note trainer app to learn the fretboard. I’m just working on strings 5 and 6, whole notes only to start. It’s going ok but I find that I’m using the “piano keys” at the bottom to find the name of the note once I know its relative position to a note I know. So, for example, instead of saying “G” in my head I’m saying “one whole tone below A” and then I look at the piano keys at the bottom and click one key below “A”. Once I add sharps and flats It will get worse. It’s a lot easier for me to count 3 half steps than it is to figure out the name of the note, I know this sounds like a minor issue but I’m currently hiding the keyboard with my thumbs and making myself say the note name before looking.
I’m not sure how to fix this. I thought about maybe an option to show the note names as a list and not make them look like a piano keyboard but that would only work with whole tones. Making the keyboard disappear would work but that would require a tap to make it come back.