Originally Posted by: dlwalke

Just curious if this is one of the things that develops over time without any intentional effort (does this ability sneak in through the back door while you are learning other things) or if fretboard awareness is something people work on. If I'm not moving my hands, I don't have a problem playing open chords and mostly fingering them accurately, but I'm a bit amazed when I see experienced players playing involved solo's, or even just bar chords where they're on the 3rd fret, for instance, and then jump up to the 10th fret and keep playing accurately. I'm also just curious what the cues, if any, are. Is it an unconscious perception of neck diameter, or just motor memory as to how far up and down you need to move your hand to get to the right spot? Are players uncounsciously counting frets as they slide their hand up the fretboard? Should I do any exercises to become more proficient at this? Thanks.

I'll add that you should not worry much about it. As you improve and have a stronger physical familiarity with the neck, you just sorta develop your ability to not always look. I've said few times that worrying about not looking distracts from getting your skills down. Not looking just happens. Like Chris said, every player looks at some point or another. Some of it is when you move positions like he said and I also notice that if I'm learning something new like a song or a chord, I look more often until I get more comfortable. I've been playing for a long time so that tells me that it's just the nature of learning guitar.