Fretboard Note Stickers Are KILLING Your Progress — Do THIS Instead
A student recently asked me: "My guitar has fretboard stickers with all the notes on them. Is that okay for learning the fretboard?"
My answer was simple: take them off. Now. Okay, maybe I softened it a little. But that was the gist.
Here's the thing, {subtag:name|part:first|ucfirst}. Those stickers feel like they're helping. You look down, you see the notes, you feel like you're learning.
But you're not.
It's like trying to build muscle by watching someone lift weights. Sure, you're in the gym. Sure, you're technically "there." But there's no resistance, no effort. Muscles grow through effort
Same for your brain.
Learning the notes requires recalling where they are. That's the exercise. That's what makes you better.
("Pain is weakness leaving the body" say the Marines. "Effort is ignorance leaving the brain" says your music theory teacher...)
When you have stickers doing the recalling for you... there is no exercise. You're just reading labels.
(Also, have you tried removing fretboard stickers? They leave behind this looovely gummy residue that's somehow harder to remove than Excalibur from stone. Ask me how I know...)
I get it. We all want shortcuts. And the internet is full of "hacks" that promise to make learning effortless.
But here's the secret nobody wants to hear: learning the fretboard is not that hard after all. It doesn't require magic. It requires about 5-10 minutes a day for a few weeks doing some simple exercises. That's it.
I explain exactly why stickers don't work — and what actually does — in the video below.
P.S. If you want the exercises I mentioned, I have a free ebook on how to learn the notes on the fretboard: https://www.musictheoryforguitar.com/guitar-notes.html. No stickers required. No sticky residue either!
Video Transcription
Hello internet, so nice to see you! I got a question on how to learn the notes on the guitar fretboard. My guitar fretboard has stickers. Is that okay for this or do I take them off? If your guitar has fretboard stickers, meaning you have the notes written down on your fretboard, take them off now.
Now, I know this is a sincere question. It's a genuine question. And so I want to answer you genuinely as a teacher to a student. Take them off. It's not helping you to have those stickers on your fretboard.
It's giving you the illusion of helping you because it seems easier now, but it's not making you faster at finding those notes. The only thing that's making you faster is actually learning where the notes are.
Which again, I know it sounds complex at first, but it's not. And if you've seen my video on how to learn the notes on the fretboard, or downloaded the free ebook I have on how to learn the notes on the fretboard, it's a free ebook, okay?
With videos I'm showing you how I'm doing it, okay? You know that it's not that hard. You just need to practice a few exercises for a while. You just know the notes on your fretboard. Simple as that.
It's not a hard thing. Don't go around YouTube finding 60 different methods, like of geometrical methods on how to triangulate on your guitar. It's a simple matter of doing a few exercises until you know your notes.
It's really not transcendental, it's not mystical, it's not complicated, it's simple practice of a few exercises. Why the fretboard sticker don't work? Because the exercises that you do to learn the notes on the fretboard consist in, for instance, playing the same note on all the six strings and finding those notes.
If the exercise is finding those notes, you can have a fretboard diagram with you at first and then you first do it by looking at a diagram or having the sticker, sure, but a diagram it's easier because you can take the diagram away.
You can take the piece of paper away and then try to do it without and see if you remember those notes. You cannot take the stickers away and then put them back in and then take them away and then put them back in.
Okay? But the exercise consists exactly in recalling the position of the note. If you have the fretboard stickers, you never get to do that thing. You never get to do the recalling because you keep reading those.
So you are not doing the exercise. It's just lifting weights without actually having weights in your hands. Okay, you are just doing the motion, but there is no exercise in there. There is no effort, there is no resistance, so you're not getting stronger.
This is the same. What I see in online lately, especially in these last couple of years, that everybody is searching for a way to make things easier, which is good. We don't want to make things more complicated than they are.
But then they go completely overboard, overshoot their target, and they find a way to make it so simple that there is no effort, no exercise, and so they are not getting better. It is important that when you make things simpler, you make it in a way that allows you to improve at your instrument or musically.
If you make it so easy that there is zero effort, that there is zero difficulty, zero resistance, you are not getting better. And so it's just a crutch. You're just playing stunted and you're never going to become better at the instrument.
Learning requires some resistance. Just like lifting weights requires some resistance, just like learning a new language requires some effort to memorize the language, just like learning anything requires some effort in it.
It doesn't mean it's unpleasant, it doesn't mean it's bad, but you need to engage with the thing and to actually get better. And I know the person who asked this question was not trying to make things too easy.
It was a genuine question, and some answered genuinely, take those stickers off. Okay? There's no shame in using those at first, okay? But take them off. Because while you have them on your guitar, you are not getting better.
Do not go around and find shortcuts for everything. Find somebody who can teach you. Could be me, could be somebody else. Do not accept shortcuts that make things too easy and so there is no effort and no learning.
The good shortcuts makes it easier to learn and you get better and eventually you can forget the shortcut because you learned the real thing and so you don't need the shortcut anymore. Okay? The good shortcuts, I like that.
I like bridges. You cross the bridge. Without the bridge, you will have to cross the river and that's hard. The shortcut, it's a bridge over that river. You cross the river. Once you've crossed the river, you don't take the bridge with you.
The shortcut stays there. You don't need to have the stickers on your guitar. You learn where the notes are and then you just know. And again, that's not as hard as it looks. It just requires doing some exercise.
And again, I have a free book about that. You find the link in the description or it appears in the video. Okay, just click on that. It's free. Download it, read it, see the video, do the exercise for five minutes a day for a few weeks, and you will learn the notes on the fretboard and you will not need to have stickers on your guitar.
This is Tommaso Zillio for musictheoryforguitar.com and until next time, enjoy!