alt Hacker News"Keys" and "note names" literally only come up on the guitar when playing open strings. When playing fretted notes, the guitar is a completely relative instrument. You should focus on learning diatonic patterns of tones and semitones on the fretboard directly, not individual notes. It's a completely different method than the piano keyboard, which involves working within a fixed diatonic framework, and altering it to make "transposition" work. This meshes well with solfège and even more so with historical solmization, which are also highly relative methods (being intended originally for the voice).
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I play electric and uptight jazz bass. While what you describe is possible for some genres, not knowing keys and the fretboard the same way you know keys on the piano is a non starter for jazz. All the competent jazz guitarists and bassists I know have this down cold. It's table stakes in my world.
> "Keys" and "note names" literally only come up on the guitar when playing open strings.
That is a false statement and stated boldly.
While it is possible to not know the note names, it is such a simple thing that takes very low effort (5 minutes a day for like 3 weeks) and it helps simplify, find and simply understand the instrument better. I would advise any player to just do it.