Reading Fretboard Diagrams

The scales in this book are presented using fretboard diagrams that work like a picture of the guitar neck. These diagrams reflect the neck from the player’s view. That is, they show the same string and fret placement that you see when you look down at your guitar neck (high E string on top, low E string on the bottom).

The dots, or inlays, on the neck of your guitar appear on frets 3, 5, 7, 9, and double dots appear at fret 12 (one octave above the open strings). Then above the twelfth fret, the same pattern repeats. In diagrams, these dots are replaced with the actual fret numbers.

Smaller portions of the fretboard diagram are often used to focus attention on a certain area. For example, the diagram below depicts just the area of the neck between the fifth and ninth frets.

Dots are used on the fretboard “grid” to indicate the fingering locations notes. Root notes are indicated by circled dots.