The Octave Game: Fretboard Fluency In 5 Minutes A Day!

Sure, you could sit down and hit each note and say it out loud. This is how I learned the fretboard, and it was BORING. This method took me forever and it left me feeling bored and defeated.

Guitar should be fun! Sure, learning can be a pain sometimes but it can also be rewarding. This is why I created The Octave Game for my students.

If you want to learn strictly by rote memory, then don’t let me stop you. But this lesson can kickstart your journey, and science even backs it up! Let me explain…

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Learning: Preparation & Science

Warm Up. Since you are going mainly for speed and muscle memory, you will want to get properly warmed up. I do this by stretching, first and foremost. There are many different ways to do it, but I can show you a video here of the best way to do it: Essential Hand Stretches For Guitarists or Any Instrumentalist

Play in standard tuning.This goes for all lessons, but standard tuning is what will make the most sense over time. Later on, you can apply your knowledge to drop tunings and even 7 string guitars. But practicing in standard helps with ear training as well. Play Clean, without effects.

Science Studies show that we (humans) learn in 15 minute intervals. This goes for music, as well as language and all kinds of other stuff! So don’t just sit there and drill. Go for 15 minutes or so at a time, and if you start to drift, or start to do anything else but the practice routine? Set the guitar down and take a short break.

More Science: If it aint working, don’t try to force it. Every guitarist has bad days. I know I have bum days, and I am sure James Hetfield and Matt Heafy do too! Some days your brain just doesn’t want to work with your fingers. That’s ok, take a day off. Or, you can come back later after a break on and try again.

Forcing it will only frustrate you more. Once you get frustrated and upset, your brain immediately stops learning. There is no reason to keep trying if you are having a bad day because science says that you will not learn anything.

But Discipline Is Still Important: Not all days are bad days, so if you plan on advancing your guitar skills, then set aside some time at least 5 days a week. This kind of discipline will develop an eventual routine.

We will have these tips in every major lesson, and we will drill how important these aspects are in the grand scheme of learning, especially when it comes to guitar.

Learning The Fretboard: You Have To At Some Point…

A million YouTubers out there swear they have fretboard hacks, but here my students are…and they do not know the entire fretboard. But don’t fret (lol, sorry) we are not going to tackle the whole thing in one week.

You don’t want to be the guy in the band that says “Umm.. it’s the 3rd fret on the biggest string”. No one wants to be that guy.

So for a precursor to this lesson, learn all of the notes up to the 12th fret on your low E string. It may be boring, but say them out loud as you strike the note. You can use the chart below.

The Octave Game: Rules

First and foremost, download the image above. These are all of the notes up to the 12th fret, in order. Past the 12th fret, they do not change order, so it is the same up there as well.

This already makes the fretboard seem smaller right? The notes just constantly repeat past the 12th fret. If you had a guitar with a million frets, it would still just reapeat the same 12 notes over and over.

Get familiar with these notes. You absolutely do not need to remember all of them to play the Octave Game. But this sheet should be a reference – so download it for later use.

Rules & Game Track

The game works like this: You have 4 measures to play octaves on beat with the track above, before the track switches up to another note. If you are not sure what a “measure” is in music, it is how beats are sub-divided. 

With this track, we are in 4/4 time and 120 beats per minute, so you have a 1234 count…and that is one measure.

Every 4 measures, the root note will change on the track. The object of the game/exercise is to find as many octaves of that note as you can. For the sake of learning, we are just doing the open guitar string notes for now. So the order goes like this:

1. E
2. A
3. D
4. G
5. B
6. E

You have a quick count-off before the track starts in the key of E. But the track does not stop until it comes back to E again. If you are looping the track then you technically have 2 measures of E.

I purposely did not add much instrumentation to the track to distract you. I made the track simple, just so you can hear how each octave changes the timbre of the note (Depending on where you hit the note).

Try to hit each octave note on beat. As if you were jamming along with the backing track. Stay on rhythm, and hit a DIFFERENT version of the note each time, until you get into the swing of the track.

You can’t cheat and hit the same place/fret twice. Also, you cannot just hit the open string as a note every time.

Refer to the note sheet from earlier to see where all of the octaves are, or try to do it by ear if you are ambitous. Try switching it up, and adding notes from above the 12th fret every time you play the Octave Game.

Scoring

Don’t be too hard on yourself at first, just learning where each instance of the E note is on your guitar is a lot to take in, much less all of the other notes. But after doing this exercise for a few days, it is time to start scoring yourself. Be real, don’t cheat!

• Two to three notes: Meh…
• Three to Four notes: Mid, You can do better!
• Four to Six: Nice!
• Six Plus: Excellent, you’re not afraid of going past the 12th fret!

Final Thoughts…

This challenge may seem simple at first, but I have played the Octave game myself, and I had some difficulty at first too! This game only covers the open string notes but i designed it that way for a reason.

Once you know where these notes are all over the fretboard, you can combine the first part of this lesson with the Octave Game. If you learn the notes up to the 12th fret on the low E string, you know the notes that come next.

So if you play the Octave Game and find all of the E and A notes, then you will be able to find neighbor notes like F and C easily. Starting with the open notes of each string will help you understand the fretboard.

The point of this lesson is to help guitarists realize that the fretboard infinitely repeats and it isnt as intimidating as it may seem. No matter where you are on the fretboard, you are probably close to the note you need.

Hopefully, this exercise helps you realize that the fretboard is not just easy to learn but you can also do it in a way that is actually (kinda) fun. Well, at least it is when compared to memorizing the notes the one by one…