Play the Guitar: Lesson 22

   In the previous part we've talked about barre chords, and just in case there were any problems understanding them, we will talk now about musical notes a little, even though I secretly hoped you knew that already.

   Musical Notes

   So. We've already touched on the subject a bit, when we introduced playing in position in lesson... err... lesson 17. We saw what a scale looked like, but we didn't see why, or how. Let's see now.

   The strings on the guitar are usually tuned in the EADGBE tuning, which means that the topmost string, the thickest one, the one with more bass in it is an E, and the bottom most one is also an E, but it has a higher pitch, obviously. The rest are arranged as mentioned and... you must have known these things if you managed to tune your guitar, all this time. Right? Right.

   For those used to the Latin notation, E is Mi, A is La, D is Re, G is Sol, B is Si and E is Mi again. Why? Beats me!

   But how do we get, from that information to our first scale? Easy. We just count the number of frets from the head of the guitar to the position we put our finger on. Like in the picture below. (We already saw how we adjust the sounds we make on the guitar in lesson... err... lesson 15.)

  
   The image shows the notes in our first scale and it also shows the distances between the notes, measured in frets. Or in semitones. What is a semitone, you ask? Don't know, don't care... It just is. It is immediately obvious that not all notes are made equal and that there are some differences between them. Why? Don't know, don't care.

   And... that's it! Now we know how notes are formed when we press with our firgers on the fretboard, thus shortening the length of the strings and thus making the sounds they produce higher.

   Trivia: If you have a guitar like mine - with 12 frets on the neck of the guitar - the last fret on the neck (the 12th) is the same note as the string, only a scale higher. So the 12th fret on the E string is also an E, the 12th fret on the A string is also an A and so on.

   Next we will learn a new song and... maybe I'll play it for you, too. You thought I couldn't play, didn't you, you bastards! No, I can play, I just didn't want to show you how good I was and discourage you. There!

To be continued...