Guitar Theory Lesson 1 – The Musical Alphabet (Video Below)
Bite Size Life is a new segment on the Modern Guitar Harmony Youtube channel.
The idea is to present one bite size piece of theory per lesson. Once you have internalised that piece of theory you can then move on to the next lesson. Each lesson builds upon the previous lesson so it’s important to understand each guitar theory lesson before moving on to the next lesson.
The Musical Alphabet
The musical alphabet is a foundation piece of guitar music theory as from the musical alphabet we can make up scales, from which you can make up chords, from which you can make up chord progressions, from which you can delve into non-functional harmony etc. Magic powers? You bet!!
Don’t worry, you’ll start easy and each Youtube video will have a corresponding blog post so that you can learn from whichever media you prefer (or maybe learn watch/read both!).
The musical alphabet looks like this;
A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab
You can see that it looks like the letter alphabet except that we are dealing with music notes which start on A and finishing on G.
The hashtag sign (#) in music denotes (pun intended) a sharp and the small b sign denotes a flat.
Sharps (#)
A sharp raises a note up to the next note. A flat lowers the note down the the previous note.
So if you play your open A string you are playing an A note (obviously) but when you press the string down at the 1st fret on the A string you are playing an A# note.
The second fret on the A string would be a B note and the third fret on the A string is a C note. The sequence continues until you are on the 12th fret on the A string at which time you are back on the A note.
From the A note on the 12th fret the musical alphabet sequence continues. The 13th fret would be A#, the 14th fret is a B note etc.
Flats (b)
Now if you start on the 12 fret on the A string you are playing an A note, right?
If you then play the 11th fret we are playing an Ab note. You are playing a G note on the 10th fret and a Gb note on the 9th fret. You are just moving from right to left on the musical alphabet as you change frets.
Enharmonic Notes
So, the musical alphabet starts with an A note but then shows an A#/Bb.
You can play both the A# and Bb on the first fret on the A string so both notes have the same sound but different names. These notes are called enharmonic notes.
To BE or Not to BE
Also you might have noticed that the notes B and E don’t have sharps and the notes C and F don’t have flats.
This can easily be remembered by the great William Shakespeare line ‘To BE or not to BE’.
Putting Guitar Theory Into Practise
I organised a workshop for jazz guitar great Frank Vignola once and as part of the deal I went to his hotel room for a guitar lesson and the main point that he made was not to just learn theory as theoretical concepts but to actually learn to play the theory.
Steve Vai makes a similar point in his book Vaideology where he introduces theoretical concepts and then has the reader do something practical with the theory.
Your approach with the musical alphabet is two fold.
First, try to learn the musical alphabet from memory so that soon you will be able to work out scales, arpeggios and chords using the musical alphabet from memory.
Secondly, learn the notes on the fretboard.
There are many ways to learn the notes on the fretboard and you should explore them all as with each exploration you’ll get better at finding the notes. Use Youtube videos, explore Google etc.
Learning the Notes on the Fretboard
A simple way of using the musical alphabet to learn the notes on the fretboard is to take any open string and to learn the notes which don’t have a sharp or a flat.
Finding the Notes on the E String Example
A great string to start with, in order to learn the notes on the fretboard, is the E string. This is because there are two E strings so once you have the notes memorized you will have two out of the six strings done.
Simple play your open E string, either your high E string or low E string, it doesn’t really matter.
Now look at the Musical Alphabet (repeated here for convenience) and find the E note.
A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab
So your open E string when played will sound the E note (obviously).
You can see that the note to the right of the E in the musical alphabet is an F note. So when you play the first fret on the E string you are playing an F note.
To the right of the F on the musical alphabet you can see the enharmonic F#/Gb notes. These are played on the 2nd fret but just skip them for now.
Next you can see the G note and this note corresponds to the 3rd fret. So play the 3rd fret on your E string, you are now sounding a G note.
Skip the G#/Ab which corresponds to the 4th fret and play the A note on the 5th fret.
Learn these 4 notes and their positions first. Your guitar might have fret markers on the 3rd and 5th frets so these fret markers would mark the G note (3rd fret on the E string) and the A note (5th fret on the E string).
Here are all the notes which are not sharps or flats on the E string.
Open string = E
1st Fret = F
3rd Fret = G
5th Fret = A
7th Fret = B
8th Fret = C
10th Fret = D
12th Fret = E
Electric guitarists can continue up the neck and the pattern just repeats.
13th Fret = F
15th Fret = G
17th Fret = A
19th Fret = B
20th Fret = C
Guitar Theory Lesson One is Done
The musical alphabet will give you a great foundation going forward in learning more guitar theory so be sure to learn it inside out!
Here is the Guitar Theory Lesson One video.
If you have any questions please contact us through the contact form in the header.
This lesson and all future Bite Size Life lessons can be found on the Modern Guitar Harmony homepage.
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