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Music vocabulary · Instruments and Voice

Fretboard

Meaning in music, with examples

nounCommon term

In music, fretboard means: The front surface of a fretted string instrument's neck where players press the strings to produce different notes.

In Turkish: perdeli klavye

How it is used

Common in guitar and bass teaching, repair work, and technique talk. It often appears with fingering, positions, chord shapes, wood, wear, and cleaning.

Example sentences

  1. During rehearsal, the guitarist marked difficult shifts on the fretboard so he could reach the jazz chords cleanly at full tempo.

    Here, fretboard means the physical playing surface where the guitarist tracks positions and moves accurately between chord shapes.

  2. The repair shop cleaned the fretboard and polished the frets before Friday's studio session with the session bassist.

    In this example, fretboard refers to a maintainable instrument part whose condition affects comfort, accuracy, and consistent playing.

Common collocations

  • map the fretboard
  • fretboard position
  • rosewood fretboard
  • instrumentAn object made or used to produce musical sounds, such as a piano, violin, guitar, drum or ney.
  • scaleA set of notes played in order of pitch, going up or down, that follows a fixed pattern of steps. Scales are the building blocks of melodies and chords.

More terms: Instruments and Voice

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