A# is the same as Bb, it is a note one semitone too high to be A, but not high enough to be a B, it is in fact exactly one semitone too flat to be A. Technically, how you refer to it is dictated by the key signature you are in, but don’t worry about that as we are getting way too ahead of ourselves.įor now, the names are interchangeable. That is to say, if you flatten F by one semitone it becomes E.Īll the other guitar notes do, you can refer to a note between as either a sharp or flat. Therefore C doesn’t have a flat.Į doesn’t have a sharp and so F has no flat. Because there are more natural notes with a sharp or flat than there are without.ī doesn’t have a sharp, there is no note between B and C they are consecutive. It is easier to remember which guitar notes don’t have a sharp or a flat. To make things easy, your guitar has measured fret spaces and each one is one semitone higher than the last. By slightly, we mean one semi-tone which is sometimes called a halftone. Which Notes Have Sharps and Flats?Ī sharp note is slightly higher than the note before it and a flattened note refers to a note slightly lower. The natural notes are named with the first 7 letters of the alphabet like they are on any western-tuned instrument. If you are familiar with a piano layout then your natural notes are the white keys and the sharps and flats would be the black keys in between. A natural note has a letter to name it and a sharp is given a hashtag ‘#’ while a flat gets a little ‘b’. The 12 notes in an octave are a mixture of natural notes and sharps/flats. Some pitched instances are present multiple times across different strings and frets which is why they are important to learn. A guitar covers a span of 4 octaves, so you have 4 differently pitched versions of each note. The notes of a guitar are the same as any western-tuned instrument, there are 12 notes in each octave. Some will no doubt be able to pitch these 6 notes naturally and tune by ear because they are so accustomed to them! What Notes Are on a Guitar? You have to tune your instrument regularly. They are the guitar notes you should be familiar with as a guitarist. You can invent your own, it can be anything, so long as you remember it correctly. I like Every Average Dedicated Guitarist Becomes Excellent because it fits the subject of learning guitar. Many are floating about to choose from such as Eat Apples Daily Grow Big Ears or Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie. To keep it easy to remember, most people use a mnemonic of some form, assigning a word to each letter and making it memorable.

The standard tuning for your open guitar strings from the lowest as follows: They are generally tuned with standard tuning unless you want to use alternate tuning for a specific genre or timbre in a song. Your bottom string produces a low E and your top string (thinnest) produces a high E. The string closest to your chest at the top of the guitar is your bottom string, numbered as your 6th string.īoth strings are tuned to the same note in different octaves. In a seated position, the string closest to your lap is referred to as your top string or first string because it is pitched the highest. The strings are counted from the bottom up, starting with the thinnest. As you look from above down at your guitar, you need to swap the idea of top and bottom in your head.

Transferring the Knowledge to Your FretboardĪ traditional guitar whether acoustic, classical, or electric has 6 strings.

So you do need to get your head around a little music theory to understand where you are and what is going on. Unlike the piano, the natural notes, sharps, and flats are not distinctively marked.

By learning to identify the patterns of a chromatic scale on a guitar and memorizing a few key fret positions you will get a good enough idea eventually. There is no need to get bogged down learning every single fret. The notes of the guitar are its alphabet, its language and in a band-situation knowing where your nearest Eb is when the bassist or pianist asks you to play one is never a bad tool to have.įor cross-instrument communication, it is invaluable, and sooner or later, no matter how many chords you have under your belt, you should learn. Sure, many guitarists jump into playing chords first and there is no set way to go about it, but learning the notes of your guitar can help you identify and find chords without tablature and make you a better all-around musician. Then you can learn how the guitar notes change as you traverse the frets. A great fundamental place to start learning to play guitar is to identify the strings and the notes they are tuned to.

Guitar music notes