These popped up in my feed. I have a cheap strat from China that I want to try them out on. Anyone ever try them?
No!!! Not for me. Its a gimmick
If you want to decorate your guitar with stickers, then go for it.
Hard NO! You wouldnât even be able to see them when youâre playing.
just start small and take it in strides.
Focus on the low E and A strings up to the 12th fret with just natural notes (no #/b), no open strings.
These will be really beneficial making E and A shaped bar chords. Thatâs only 14 notes! not so bad. Spend 5/10 min a day with each string over a few weeks, they will be second nature be fore you know it.
Long ago I used to wonder why the names of the notes were not written on piano / organ keys. I mean, those instruments have so many more playable notes than guitars.
But as other said, take 5-10 minutes a day to memorize key notes on the 5th and 6th string, and in a few weeks time youâll be fine.
Plus, I wouldnât really stick anything on the fingerboard.
Iâm a no on that, as well. I think youâre better off learning the fretboard without them.
It still seems like it wouldnât hurt to label them fir a while. Right now Iâm counting from the first or the twelfth fret which is pretty cumbersome. I have a $60 guitar from Amazon that I could apply them to. It just seems like it help me learn faster. So far all the comments are noâs but no one really has a reason why.
Keegan
What exactly are you trying to learn by using these stickers? I donât see how they will help with Grade 1 lessons, well any lessons. Trying to understand what the deal is.
Toby
My reason was you canât really see them anyway when youâre playing. Just print out a fretboard diagram.
Because youâre going to hurt your back and neck leaning over your
guitar looking at the stickers.
You need to learn the notes so you know where your roots notes are. I though my explanation was clear that the two bottom strings are going to give you the best jump start as thatâs where very common chord shapes will start. You have to try, its going to be hard at first, but trust me you will be better off skipping the stickers.
They only time I would say putting stickers on your neck is if you donât have side markers. those will be your home base to find the 3rd,5th,7th,12th fret. and you would put just a dot on the side of the neck, not the fretboard
Keegan, good advice given. Iâd concur with the âNo stickersâ recommendation.
I am assuming you are new to guitar and following Justinâs path, beginning with Grade 1. Iâd suggest not worrying about notes on the neck until Justin introduces that. Iâd expect when he introduces power chords (not sure, donât know the new Grades). Then as suggested by @headsmell focus would be on low E and A strings.
When I gave this some attention (last year in year 5 of my learning), I followed an approach based on learning to play each note on each string on frets 1 to 12, no open notes. When doing that and applying the âPractice makes permanentâ principle, I did the exercise with a neck diagram in front of me. I took great care to make sure I played each note correctly. Initially it took nearly all the time allocated to play a note in every position up from the low E to high e and back down to low E. But over time, with just 5-10 minutes at the start of every playing session, it becomes memorised.
Thatâs actually a practice routine in Justinâs Practical Music Theory book as well. Really effective method.
As the others explained, you wouldnât see the stickers under your fingers, and leaning down to check your fingers all the time would hurt your posture, too.
Justinâs website already has some fretboard diagrams available. True, they donât show all 72 fret positions (until the 12th fret), but they will give you a solid foundation if you follow the lessons and donât rush anything.
Really, just be patient and take your time to memorize the notes. Iâm sure you already know the names of the open strings forwards and backwards, so take only 1 step further and tackle the notes at the 3rd fret on the 5th and 6th strings. For the other strings, try to apply the octave shapes as well so you will discover the relationship between the various intervals and the place of the notes on the fretboard for yourself. And the discoveries you make on your own will mean so much more to you, even if they are relatively small things in the greater scheme of guitar playing. Like, at the 7th fret youâll find the octave of the open fret above (vertically). Thatâs another 6 positions where you know which note is.
So yeah, just be patient and put in the practice time to get familiar with the fingerboard.
As others have said itâs a firm no an for no other reason than itâs a waste of money. As others have said the key notes to learn are on Strings 5 & 6 as these will be used when you start to learn barre and powerchords. String 6 is particularly important as this gives you the starting root notes for your scales as well. If you know String 5 and 6 (and String 1 is identical to String 6) then youâll know enough for years as a beginner.
I support the ânoâ votes.
If you are still learning then you may still be watching your fretting hand most of the time, but even when you do this, you shouldnât be leaning over far enough that you would see these stickers.
So they are either useless, or they are encouraging you to adopt a a very awkward position in order to see them.
If you are still at this point in your learning, then learning CAGED shapes and the associated chords and scales, and understanding intervals is probably more useful than trying to understand and memorise note names.
If you are past this point and are able to confidently fret chords and notes without constantly watching your fretting then these stickers would be even more useless.
So, at best I think they are useless gimmick. At worst I suspect they are a crutch which will encourage bad habits and impede your learning.
Cheers,
Keith
While the discussion continues find somewhere handy for this, you can do the flats n sharps
And its a NO from me btw.
I hope youâve been given enough reasons by now, but itâs your money and your guitar so if you really feel it could help, then your choice.
gimmicks like this have been available for at least the last 30 years and have never taken off. Why? Because they are impractical and no substitute for slow methodical brain training.
I am still struggling to learn the notes but those I do know are now stuck there due to perseverence. I honestly believe that this would not help you one bit and apart from a bad back and eye strain I feel it will hamper your overall progress by reducing your cognitive skills to work things out for yourself.
To expand on my earlier âno:â
I think youâre better off using the frets and fretboard inlays/dots as your visual reference. Frets are going to always be present, and most guitars will have dots/inlays in standard positions (unless you have a classical guitar). If you get used to using stickers as a visual reference I suspect that when you remove them your âfretboard visual referenceâ will have changed, throwing you off.
To be on the other side of the vote.
Putting the stickers on would in itâs self help you learn where
the notes on the neck. So maybe spend a few days putting
the stickers on, then taking them off rinse/repeat
But if you donât know the notes on the neck you could get it
wrong and that would be a bad thing