Joe Satriani agrees with Cory Wong – says guitarists should know every note on the fretboard

Cory Wong ruffled some feathers in the guitar world recently when he said “advanced” guitarists should be able to identify and play every single note on the fretboard. After sparking some serious debate, the jazz-funk maestro lapped it up, saying: “I didn’t know this would trigger so many folks – I’m here for it.”

But while many disagreed with Wong’s position, with many saying it’s not necessary to have that level of fretboard fluency, he does have his backers, including in the form of virtuoso Joe Satriani.

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In a new conversation with Cory Wong himself on his Wong Notes podcast, Satch says [via Guitar World]: “I would always insist that you know every single note right from the beginning. ‘Find-the-note-everywhere exercise.’ I think that’s what I would write on the top of the lesson book. And I’d always tell them, ‘Look, it’s gonna take maybe three weeks, and then you’ll never think about this ever again.’”

Satriani says this advice applies, in particular, to young players, as their brains are more sponge-like at absorbing that information.

“The time to learn these things is when you’re that young, and your cells are being recreated every minute, and you’ve got a million hormones and all this energy, and it’s the hardest time to focus, but it’s the best time to learn. It’ll just become part of who you are,” he says.

Satch says young guitarists should apply this approach to learning scales, too.

“I would always tell them [guitar students], ‘This is not music – you got to learn this, form an opinion about it. That’s what you’re playing the scales for. What’s your opinion of Mixolydian versus Phrygian dominant? When do you pull one scale out instead of the other?’ You have to make that decision. How are you going to do that if you can’t play it?” he says.

In other news, Cory Wong recently explained the process he underwent in designing his new humbucker-loaded StingRay II signature guitar with Ernie Ball Music Man.

“I finally had to accept the reality that single coils weren’t going to give me everything the world has to offer,” he said.