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NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD

NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD

standard tuning E A D G B e · first twelve frets

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Free

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
music · beginners · reference · music room

Shaded columns are the dotted frets. Sharp notes may equally be named as flats: F♯ is the same pitch as G♭.

WHY THE FRETBOARD RESETS AT FRET TWELVE

The twelfth fret halves the string. Half the length means double the frequency — the same note an octave higher.

So the whole pattern of notes starts over from there. Learn twelve frets and you know the entire neck.

That’s also why fret twelve carries a double dot: it marks the end of a cycle, not an arbitrary spot.

On the sheet

  • Shaded columns are the dotted frets. Sharp notes may equally be named as flats: F♯ is the same pitch as G♭.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 5 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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