Guitar Fretboard Chart

How to use this chart

1. Pick your tuning first. Everything below it changes. If you play in drop D and read a standard-tuning chart, every note on your lowest string is wrong by two frets, which is the single most common way people learn the neck incorrectly.
2. Tap any fret. You hear the note and get its name, its octave, its pitch in hertz, and every other place on the neck that same note lives. Tap one of those chips to jump there.
3. Switch to naturals only. Seven letters instead of twelve. This is the view to learn from, because the sharps and flats are just the gaps between the letters and they come free once the letters are solid.
4. Use "find one note" for drills. Pick C and the whole neck goes dark except every C on it. Learning one note at a time across all six strings is faster than learning one string at a time, because it teaches you the shapes the octaves make.
5. Set your fret range and print it. Twelve frets for the pattern, fifteen for most playing, twenty-two for the whole neck. The PDF is exactly what is on screen, including left-handed.

Why this chart is different

Search for a fretboard chart and you get two kinds of page. There are the pictures, which are one fixed image in standard tuning that you cannot interact with, and quite often cost three dollars on Etsy. And there is one genuinely good interactive fretboard, which gives you nothing to take away when you close the tab. Nobody does both.

• 12 tunings, not one. Standard, drop D, drop C, half and whole step down, DADGAD, and the open G, D, E and C tunings. The neck redraws completely, because in an alternate tuning it genuinely is a different neck.
• It is a chart you can hear. Every fret plays. Connecting the name to the sound is the entire point of learning the fretboard, and a printed poster cannot do it.
• Left-handed properly, not as an afterthought. The neck mirrors, the nut moves to the right, the inlays follow, and the arrow keys reverse with it. Lefties normally get told to hold the chart up to a mirror.
• Free printable PDF of the chart you actually built. Your tuning, your fret range, your spelling, your handedness, drawn as vectors so it prints sharp at any size. The charts ranking above this one are static images, and several of them are paid.
• It shows you the octaves. Tap a note and every other instance of it lights up as a chip. That map of repeats is what fretboard memorisation actually is, and no other chart surfaces it.
• Embeddable, free, with attribution built in. Guitar teachers can drop the whole thing into a lesson page. No competitor on the first page offers an embed at all.

How it works (the maths)

There is no estimation anywhere in this tool. Where a note sits on a fretboard is fixed arithmetic, and it follows from one fact: a fret is one semitone.

note at (string, fret) = open string pitch + fret     (in semitones)

standard tuning, low to high:  E2  A2  D3  G3  B3  E4
as MIDI numbers:               40  45  50  55  59  64

so the 6th string, 5th fret   = 40 + 5  = 45 = A2
and the 6th string, 12th fret = 40 + 12 = 52 = E3, the open string an octave up

frequency = 440 × 2^((n − 69) / 12)      A4 = MIDI 69 = 440 Hz

Twelve semitones make an octave, so fret 12 is the octave and the neck above it repeats the neck below it exactly. That is why the 12th fret gets a double inlay dot, and it is why you only ever have to learn twelve frets rather than twenty-two. It is also literal physics rather than convention: the 12th fret sits at the halfway point of the string, and halving a string's vibrating length doubles its frequency.

The gaps in the musical alphabet are the other half of the picture. B to C and E to F are one fret apart, not two, because there is no B♯ or E♯ in standard naming. Every player who has counted up from A and landed a fret out has been caught by exactly that.

One honest note on spelling. A bare fretboard has no key, so the black notes have no single correct name: the 2nd fret of the low E string is F♯ and G♭ equally, and which one is right depends on music that is not on this chart yet. Rather than pick for you, both spellings are offered and the toggle switches between them. If you want the spelling that a particular key demands, our interactive circle of fifths is the tool that answers that.

Three ways players actually use this

Learning one note across the whole neck

Set the mode to find one note and pick C. In standard tuning within fifteen frets you get eight of them: the 8th fret of the low E, the 3rd and 15th of the A, the 10th of the D, the 5th of the G, the 1st and 13th of the B, and the 8th of the high E. Look at the shape those make. The 8th fret of the low E and the 8th fret of the high E are two octaves apart and vertically aligned, and the 3rd fret of the A sits diagonally below the 5th of the G. Those two shapes, the two-strings-up-two-frets-across octave and the straight-across double octave, are most of what fretboard fluency is. Learn C that way, then G, then D, and the neck stops being a grid.

Checking yourself in drop D before you learn it wrong

Switch to drop D and watch only the lowest string change: the open string becomes D, and every note on it slides two frets higher than you have been reading it. The 5th fret is no longer A, it is G. Everything on the other five strings is untouched. Seeing that isolated is worth more than any amount of being told it, and it is why the one-finger power chord works down there. The same view makes the case for a heavier string set: detune a standard low E by two semitones and it goes slack, which is what the string suggestions beside the chart change to when you pick a dropped tuning. Our electric string guide covers the heavy-bottom sets built for it.

Reading DADGAD without guessing

Open tunings break every shape you know, which is the appeal and also the difficulty. Put the chart in DADGAD and the second string is A, not B, so the chord grips in your fingers now produce something else entirely. With the note names on the neck you can work out what you are actually playing rather than learning shapes by rote. Pair it with our chord identifier: read the notes off this chart, tap them in there, and it tells you the name of the thing you just stumbled onto.

Frequently asked questions

How do I memorize the guitar fretboard?

Not string by string, which is how most people try and stall. Learn one note at a time across all six strings, using the find-one-note mode above. Start with the seven naturals and ignore the sharps and flats entirely, because those are just the gaps and they arrive free. Learn the landmarks first: the 5th and 7th frets, the 12th as the octave, and the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th inlay dots. Then drill in short bursts, a minute or two, several times a day rather than an hour once a week. Most players get the naturals solid in two or three weeks this way. The two things that make it stick are naming the note out loud as you play it, and always naming it on a real string rather than reading it off a page.

What is the 3 fret rule on guitar?

It usually refers to the fretting-hand position where your hand covers three frets rather than four, with the index, middle and ring fingers taking one each and the little finger supporting the third. It matters low on the neck, where the frets are widest and a one-finger-per-fret stretch is genuinely hard on the hand. Some players also use the phrase for the fact that the same note reappears three frets away on adjacent strings between the G and B strings, which is the one place the guitar's tuning breaks its own pattern: five of the six string intervals are perfect fourths, but G to B is a major third. That single irregularity is why octave shapes change when they cross the B string, and you can see it happen on the chart above.

What is the rule of 18 for fretboard layout?

It is the old luthier's method for spacing the frets themselves, not for naming notes. Divide the remaining string length by 18 and that is where the next fret goes. It is a close approximation of the true figure, 17.817, which comes from the twelfth root of two: to drop a string by one semitone you multiply its length by 2^−1/12, and the arithmetic works out to dividing by 17.817. The old rule of 18 puts the octave slightly sharp over the length of a neck, which is why modern builders use the exact figure. It has no bearing on which note is which, and this chart deals only with the notes.

Is there a free printable guitar fretboard chart PDF?

Yes, and it is the chart you configured rather than a fixed image. Press Printable PDF and you get your tuning, your fret range, your sharp or flat spelling and your handedness, with naturals filled and accidentals outlined so it stays readable in black and white. It is drawn as vectors, so it prints sharp at any size, and there is no email form or account in front of it.

Are the fretboard notes the same on acoustic, electric and classical guitars?

Identical. All three use the same standard E A D G B E tuning, so a given string and fret is the same note on every one of them, and everything you learn here transfers completely. What differs is scale length, which changes how far apart the frets physically sit, and string type. Bass guitar is the one real departure: it uses the lowest four strings only, tuned a full octave below the guitar's. If you are still choosing an instrument to learn on, our best electric guitars roundup covers the necks that make this easiest, and our post on guitar string notes covers the six open strings in detail.

Related tools

• Guitar Scales Chart. Once you know where the notes are, this shows which of them belong to a scale, in any key.
• Chord Identifier. Read notes off the neck above, tap them in, and get the chord's real name.
• Note Frequency Chart. The hertz behind every fret on this page, from C0 to B8.
• Interactive Circle of Fifths. Which spelling a key demands, and which notes belong together.
• Beginner Guitar Chord Chart. The open shapes these notes build into, ordered easiest first.
• Browse all free musician's tools by Julian →

Gear that makes learning the neck easier

The suggestions beside the chart change with the tuning you pick, because a player in drop C needs something different from one in standard. Three things genuinely help. A clip-on tuner comes first and is not optional: naming a fret is meaningless if the string under it is flat, and every note you learn on an out-of-tune guitar is a note you learn wrong. The right string gauge matters the moment you leave standard tuning, because a standard set detuned two semitones goes slack and reads sharp when you fret it, so the chart and your ears will disagree. And the instrument itself: a neck with clear inlay dots and comfortable spacing makes the landmarks obvious, which is a real difference between the entries in our best electric guitars and best acoustic guitars roundups.

Sources & methodology

• Note positions. A fret is one semitone, so the note at any position is open string pitch + fret number. Open-string pitches are the published standard for each tuning; standard tuning is E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4, which is MIDI 40 45 50 55 59 64 in scientific pitch notation (C4 = middle C = MIDI 60).
• Frequencies. 12-tone equal temperament, f = 440 × 2^((n − 69)/12), with A4 = 440 Hz as set by ISO 16. The same engine powers our note frequency chart.
• The octave at fret 12. The 12th fret sits at half the vibrating length of the string, and halving the length doubles the frequency, so the note repeats an octave higher. Fret spacing itself follows the same twelfth-root-of-two relationship, which is the exact figure (17.817) behind the luthier's old "rule of 18". See HyperPhysics (Georgia State University) on string length and pitch.
• Enharmonic spelling. A chromatic neck map carries no key, so both the sharp and flat name of each black note is offered rather than guessed at. Reference: musictheory.net.
• Verification. The chart is checked by a fixture suite on every build, written by hand from the tuning definitions rather than generated from the code under test. Landmark positions any guitarist can check on an instrument (5th fret of the low E is an A, the 12th fret is the octave, 1st fret of the B string is middle C) are asserted directly; octave equivalence is checked on every string of every tuning; each tuning's open row must spell its own name; and all 1,656 frequencies the chart can display are re-derived through the separately written engine behind our note frequency chart, which has to agree to within a hundredth of a hertz. If any of it drifts, the site does not build.

Note positions are fixed by the tuning and are the same on any six-string guitar. Frequencies assume equal temperament at A4 = 440 Hz; real instruments are stretch-tuned and intonation varies slightly along the neck, so a tuner may read a few cents off by design. Reviewed by Julian Reyes, MM (Berklee). About Julian · Last reviewed September 7, 2026.

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