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Welcome to Day Two of Fretboard Anatomy. Yesterday we learned about creating new habits.
Hopefully you got the Cue, you’re executing this Routine, and you’re going to Celebrate when you’re done.
The Trouble With Guitars
Guitar players in general tend to think about the guitar in shapes. We have chord grids, and scale shapes, and capos to change the key of a song. Even tablature is more like a picture of our guitar than it is like standard notation.
This is all fine. It’s one of the things that makes playing guitar so immediately rewarding. But it’s a double-edged sword, because it’s also the thing that keeps us from understanding music the way we should.
In order to move past our current limitations, we have to learn to see the guitar in a new way. Specifically, we have to start seeing notes as letter names instead of fret numbers, because there are layers and layers of meaning that most of us aren’t getting.
So today we’ll be reviewing some extremely basic music theory. This might be completely boring for some of you, and it might be slightly overwhelming for others, but I have to be sure we’re all on the same page before the real fun begins tomorrow.
Seeing letter names when you look at your guitar starts with knowing which letters to expect.
The musical alphabet runs from A to G, and then it starts over again. ABCDEFG ABCDEFG ABCDEFG.
We don’t use H through Z, which makes things a little easier.
What makes things more difficult, especially at first, is the fact that there are notes in between those nice, orderly ABCDEFGs.
Check out this piano keyboard.
See how there are white keys and there are black keys? The white keys are the ones we just mentioned––ABCDEF&G. Those black keys, though, have scary & confusing names like Bb, G# and Eb.
Luckily for us, we don’t need to know anything about the scarily named black keys for now, aside from how to avoid them.
Avoiding them on a piano is easy enough–– they’re a different color than the notes we’re looking for. On a guitar, though, all the notes look more or less the same.
Check out that piano keyboard again––notice how in some spots there are two white keys together?
In between the notes B & C, and in between the notes E & F, there’s no black key. Remember this, because it’s going to come in handy: B and C. E and F.
On a guitar, the notes work exactly the same, only they’re not color-coded. Which means we need to discard this whole black key-white key thing, and call them by more proper names.
The clean, easy ABCDEFG notes that are white on a piano are called NATURALS.
The scary, confusing black notes are called ACCIDENTALS.
Keys on a piano and frets on a guitar work the same.
Going up one fret on a guitar is the same sound as going up one key on a piano.
This means that going from one natural note to the next one is usually two frets’ distance.
Why? Check it out––here’s a natural note (white key). The next note up is this accidental (black key), which we’re avoiding for now. Two notes up is where we find the next natural note.
It’s the same on a guitar. Since we went up two notes on the piano, we go up two frets on the guitar.
But––there are two spots where this isn’t true.
Where? In between B & C, and in between E & F. There’s no accidental between those two pairs, so the next natural note is only one fret up.
Add this to the list of important things I need you to remember:
There are no accidentals between B & C or E & F.
Enough confusing talky-talk.
Let’s make this concrete.
Even if your head is swimming right now, I promise you that this will make perfect sense very soon.
Grab your guitar. Play the open 1st string. That note is called “E.”
To get from the E to the next natural note, the F, we only have to go up one fret. Why is that? Because there is no accidental between E and F.
To go from F to G, though, we have to go up two frets. Why? Because we’re passing over the accidental that lives in between F and G.
To go from G to A is the same thing––we’re skipping over the accidental between them, so it’s two frets.
Same deal between A and B.
Between B and C though, there’s no accidental, so we only have to go up one fret.
C to D is two frets. D to E is two frets.
E is where we started, and F is one fret away.
Which leads us to your job for today.
Your mission is memorize the names of the natural notes on your first string.
You should go up as far as you expect to play. If you’re an acoustic guitarist, the second time you get to A is plenty. If you have one of those pointy 24-fret heavy metal guitars, you might as well go all the way up.
It’s important that you start to think of the notes as their letter names without translating them from fret numbers first.
So try not to think to yourself, “well, the 7th fret is B.”
It’s one thing to know the formula to convert Celcius to Fahrenheit, but you’ll know you truly understand when you see 35 C on the thermometer and think “I better wear shorts today.”
A good way to do this is to say the letter names out loud as you play them.
You’ll feel ridiculous, but it really does work.
Once you can name all the notes going up the neck, try doing it going down the neck. When that’s no longer an issue, start doing them out of order.
- get the cue? do the routine? celebrate your success?
- start the lesson with guitar in lap?
- learn that the musical alphabet goes ABCDEFG ABCDEFG, etc?
- learn about accidentals & naturals?
- learn that there is no accidental between B & C and E & F?
- map out the natural notes on your first string?