Beginner Bass Guitar – Notes On The Neck

The Musical Note System

To label pitches in music, we use the notes of the alphabet :

A B C D E F G

The distance between two adjacent notes of the same letter is called an Octave. So the distance from one A to the next A (ABCDEFGA) is 1 Octave.

Half Steps & Whole Steps

The smallest measurements of musical distance are Half Steps and Whole Steps.

Half steps can be seen easily on the bass as a single fret of distance. Whole steps cover 2 frets of distance.

The basic natural notes of ABCEDFG are spaced by whole step except for the B to C and the E to F which are both spaced by a half step:

A – Whole – B – Half – C – Whole – D – Whole – E – Half – F – Whole – G – Whole – A

Notes On The Fretboard

If we use this system to locate the notes on the A string we find the following:

In the above diagram you can plainly see the half steps between B to C and E to F. All others are divided by whole steps.

Sharps & Flats

So far we’ve only looked at natural notes but also have sharps and flats.

• If we raise a natural note by a half step it becomes a sharp (#)
• If we lower a natural note by a half step it becomes a flat (b)

Here we have a D natural (D), D Sharp (D#) and a D flat (Db):

• D Natural (D): A string 5^th Fret
• D Sharp (D#): A string 6^th Fret
• D Flat (Db): A string 4^th Fret

This can be applied to any note. As another example here we see a G, G# and Gb:

• G Natural (G): E string 3^rd Fret
• G Sharp (G#): E string 4^th Fret
• G Flat (Gb): E string 2^nd Fret

As you may have noticed, one fret may be occupied by two different note names. The second fret of the E string can be F# OR Gb:

There are many reasons for this and are all based on musical context. Don’t worry about it for now. Just be aware that the label for any fret or pitch can be two different note names.

By using the sharps and flats we can fill in the remaining notes on the A string of the bass:

Note: This list uses only sharps. Each sharp can also be written as the appropriate flat.

We can perform the same process on each string to provide note names for every fret on the bass. Here are the notes for every fret below the 12^th fret:

This is obviously a huge number of notes. But we can use fret markers as an aid in getting started with our fretboard knowledge.

Learning By Fret Marker

The fret markers can be used a navigational aid on the bass fretboard. Markers are useful in making the first step towards learning all the notes of the bass fretboard. Use the following set of natural note fret markers as your initial guide:

3^rd, 5^th and 7^th fret markers of the E string

3^rd, 5^th and 7^th fret markers of the A string

Combined fret markers of the E and A strings

3^rd, 5^th, 7^th and 9^th fret markers of the D string

Combined fret markers E to D strings

5^th, 7^th and 9^th fret markers of the G string

Combined fret markers E to G strings

You can use this set of fret markers as an initial guide for finding a note. You can also find sharps and flats by finding the natural note and moving up or down by a fret.

Test Sheets

The Test Sheets are available to view and download for premium course members (purchase Beginner Bass Guitar from the Talkingbass Web Store). However you can use the sheets presented on the video for practice in this free teaser.