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I haven’t given you anything to practice. That’s up to you. Practice the stuff that interests you, but try to learn the theory of everything. You should take what’s here and expand on it. You’re going to have to think a lot.
Warning: I am often going to tell you something once, and then I will use that knowledge over and over without explanation, simply to keep this course short. Other things, I’ll repeat. I think you’ll appreciate the lack of clutter, but it makes it absolutely necessary for you to understand (and even remember in most cases) every fact you see.
Study one sentence at a time.
Now let’s start.
12 Notes
There 12 and only 12 notes in all of the music that you listen to.
They are A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#.
These 12 notes have a name. They are called the ‘chromatic scale’. You could just as well write it starting on any other of its notes, e.g.- C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B
You can have higher or lower A’s or B’s or whatever (called different octaves), but those notes are still A’s or B’s.
All these chromatic scale notes are said to be one half step away from their neighbor. (one half step equals one fret distance on your guitar)
I choose to use sharps and not flats for the notes here, but that doesn’t matter. By the way, A# is the same thing as Bb, C# is the same thing as Db, etc.
Let me introduce you to the concept of labeling this chromatic scale with numbers. Now for reasons I won’t explain, the numbering system goes 1, b2, 2, b3, 3, 4, b5, 5, b6, 6, b7, 7. I choose to use flats for it, because that’s more common.
A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#
1, b2, 2, b3, 3, 4, b5, 5, b6, 6, b7, 7
-and the letter notes could keep going - A, A#, B, etc.
and the numbering could keep going - 8, b9, 9 etc.
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If you start with the 1 on A, then you could say that the ‘4’ is D, or the ‘b6’ is F, right?
Humor me. Let me work with the chromatic scale starting on C, and then number it.
C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B
1, b2, 2, b3, 3, 4, b5, 5, b6, 6, b7, 7
Note: Because there are only 12 notes in existence, the guitar repeats itself 12 frets up from wherever you are.
Here is a chart of all the notes on your guitar. You can see that the notes repeat on the next higher string, but 5 frets down. (or 4 on the 2nd string)
Notice that the note names of the “open” strings are in the brown ‘head’ of the guitar diagram.
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