Take away all the sharps and flats

If we take away all the sharps and flats we can see more clearly how all the notes on the strings travel along them in the order A B C D E F G and back to A again.
Just like the black notes on a piano all the sharps and flats sit between these alphabetical notes.

Because we know that the string order has been tuned to Every Body Gets Dinner At Eight (E B G D A E) it is a great datum from which we can work out all the other notes.

The key areas to note about this diagram to help you learn scales along each individual string are

1. Note A to G jump two frets except notes E and B only jump one fret.

2. The notes on the top string and bottom string are identical.

3. Every note on fret 11 are all sharps so if you use C major scale then fret 11 would never get used.

4. Fret 12 are identical notes to our datum at the head of the guitar. See below:

5. Fret 12 identical notes can be quickly found by noticing they run across the string at the only point where there are two double dots on the fingerboard.