Beginner: Notes On The Guitar
August 17, 2008
Notes on a guitar? Who ever heard of such a thing? The fact is, at some point or another, it is necessary to have at least a basic understanding of how to find notes on the guitar. So, let’s start with the basics.
Each string, when played without fretting anything, is a note. (Duh!) Starting from the lowest-sounding string to the highest, here is the order of the notes: EADGBE. Simple enough, right? In other words, if you play the lowest note on your guitar on the lowest string (in the default tuning,) that note will be an E. If you move to the next string, that note will be an A. Also note that two strings are E: a high E and a low E.
Now, in our musical scale, there are 12 notes. These notes are: A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#. Note: The “#” symbol is read as “sharp.” So, the 12 notes range from A to G, with “sharps” in between. Notice that there is no B# or E#.
The “sharps” of a note are also the “flats” (denoted by the symbol “b”) of the next highest note. In other words, A# could also be called Bb; they’re the same thing. Similarly, C# is the same as Db, D# the same as Eb, etc. When going through the notes, after going past G#/Ab, the scale returns to A again. So, if you start at A and play every note until you return all the way to A, you are now one octave higher than the first A you played.
To apply this to guitar, we can merely count up the strings, since each fret is one note. So if we play a note on the guitar, for example G, and then move it up one fret and play the string again, we will be playing G#/Ab. We’ll start with the low E string, with the numbers denoting the frets.
Open: E
1: F
2: F#/Gb
3: G
4: G#/Ab
5: A
6: A#/Bb
7: B
8: C
9: C#/Db
10: D
11: D#/Eb
12: E
Notice that on the twelfth fret, we return to the note E, only this E is one octave higher than playing the string without fretting anything. You will notice that this works for every string. Go on, try it!
Practice counting through every note in an octave on every string. This will help you tremendously in the future.
