This post introduces how intervals are played on the guitar fretboard. Ear training teaches you to recognize and think in terms of musical intervals. But you need to know how to play these on your fretboard to apply your ear training skills to the guitar.

Guitar fretboard

You can find and play any interval on your guitar with a little knowledge of the way notes are laid out.

The first thing you must know is that each fret along a string of the guitar is an interval of one half step, or minor second. So two frets equals a whole step, or major second, three frets a minor third, four frets a major third, and so on.

This pattern continues for twelve frets to reproduce all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. This scale is repeated, starting from a different note, on each string. At the open strings in standard tuning the notes from the 6th to the 1st string are E A D G B e.

If you don’t already know all the intervals along a string, pick up your guitar now and learn them. Start at an open string and go up one fret at a time naming each interval in relation to the open string. Fret one minor second, fret two major second.

Name the notes at each fret as you go too. Knowledge of the notes on the fretboard will help you to find melodies and chords easily as you learn.

This post has introduced you to the notes and intervals along the strings of the guitar. But you will often play intervals using notes from two different strings. The next post in this series will look at how these cross-string intervals are created and show you some easy to learn shapes you can memorize to play any interval.

Ear Master Pro 5 ear training software lets you enter answers on a virtual guitar fretboard so you build your guitar skills at the same time as you train your ears. Download it today and try it free for 21 days.

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