Mandolin Fretboard

Learning all the notes on the fretboard can be a little intimidating. The best way to learn the notes is to start with a few notes on one string (this document presents groups of six). If six is too much to start, learn the notes in groups of three. Even if you just learn half the fretboard, frets 1 to 6, you will benefit. One reason to learn the fretboard is to be able to find the root note of a chord. This is needed in playing moveable chords. It's beneficial to learn chords, or the root note of chords you already know, in context of learning the fretboard. I have included one sample chord for each fret note. These are moveable chords.

Once you learn a chord for a specific fret, you can simply move the chord up or down a fret, and that chord will be the name of the note on the new fret. If you learn all six chords, and the six notes, you will have learned 36 chords, but only six chord shapes. The red dot represents the root note of the chord.