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Beginner Guitar Lesson: Easy Guitar Notes
By Mike Hayes | January 5, 2009
Guitar players who know the names and location of all the notes
on the fretboard have a distinct advantage over players who learn
via guitar TAB.
In fact the guitar offers many alternative ways to play most
musical phrases. The trick is to know your options and the way to
do that is to know how notes of the same pitch can be re-located
to different parts of the guitar fretboard.
Let’s start by learning the names of the notes on the first
string of the guitar.
First string open = E
First string/first fret = F
First string/second fret = F#/Gb
First string/third fret = G
First string/fourth fret = G#/Ab
First string/fifth fret = A
First string/sixth fret = A#/Bb
First string/seventh fret = B
First string/eight fret = C
First string/ninth fret = C#/Db
First string/tenth fret = D
First string/eleventh fret = D#/Eb
First string/twelfth fret = E
Now, here is where the guitar differs from other instruments such
as the piano. On the piano there would be only one place on the
keyboard where you would be able to lay these notes.
On the guitar it is possible to play these exact same notes on
different strings.
Here is how it works, for those guitarists who know how to tune
your guitar on the fifth fret without an electronic tuner it
should be fairly easy to follow how I’m working this out.
Here is a quick reminder of how to tune your guitar without an
electronic tuner.
Tune your 5th string open to match the pitch of the sixth string
on the fifth fret.
Tune your 4th string open to match the pitch of the fifth string
on the fifth fret.
Tune your 3rd string open to match the pitch of the fourth string
on the fifth fret.
Tune your 2nd string open to match the pitch of the third string
on the fourth fret.
Tune your 1st string open to match the pitch of the second string
on the fifth fret.
You will notice that all the open strings (except for the second
string) get their reference pitch from the fifth fret of the
string above.
For example the 3rd string open gets it’s reference pitch from
the fourth string/fifth fret.
This is our clue … if the first string open is the same pitch
as the second string 5th fret, remember that’s what we did when
we were tuning our guitar by ear (without an electronic tuner).
Then it stands to reason that the remaining notes on the second
string above the fifth fret will be a duplication of the notes
that we already know on the first string.
You will need to re-read the last paragraph a few times to get
the idea, it’s like reverse engineering for guitar, but stick
with and you will be very pleased with the results.
To help you with the concept here is a summary of what we now
know:
first string open (E) = second string 5th fret (E)
first string first fret (F) = second string 6th fret (F)
first string second fret (F#/Gb) = second string 7th fret (F#/Gb)
first string third fret (G) = second string 8th fret (G)
first string fourth fret (G#/Ab) = second string 9th fret (G#/Ab)
first string fifth fret (A) = second string 10th fret (A)
first string six fret (A#/Bb) = second string 11th fret (A#/Bb)
first string seventh fret (B) = second string 12th fret (B)
Take your time playing and listening to these notes. Listen
carefully and you will discover that notes on the second string
sound darker than their counterparts on the first string.
Being able to not only select the correct pitch of a note a
guitarist is playing but also to know exactly where the guitarist
is playing that note on the fretboard (identifying the note by
it’s tone) is a big step towards playing the guitar by ear.
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