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Learning How To Read Guitar Notes

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To learn how to read the guitar notes you will need a chart with the notes on the guitar fretboard, a music theory book and some free time every day for a while.

Here is a picture of the basic notes on the guitar. This is from the website of Steve Nelson which has other free downloads too.

Here is the Guitar Alliance fretboard chart.

The easiest way of getting the guitar notes to make sense is to learn the names of the notes of the open guitar strings first. If you hold the guitar in playing position, the string closest to the top side of the guitar – the thickest of the six strings – is the E. The next string, the fifth is the A string, the fourth is D, the third G, the second is B, and the thinnest string is E again, only one octave higher than the E on the sixth string.

If you look at your guitar fretboard chart you will see how the notes go up in steps. You will see that some notes have a whole fret between them. Your music theory book will tell you that these spaces hold notes called “sharps” and “flats”, collectively known as “accidentals”. The note at the first fret on the sixth string is F, the next note is not G as you might expect, but F sharp which is written as F#. The note can also be called G flat or Gb, because it is the note BELOW G as well as being the note ABOVE F. You will see that there are no accidentals between the notes B and C or E and F.

So you can see the notes progressing in scales along each of the guitar strings and also between the strings. For instance you can play the notes on the sixth string and instead of going from the G at the third fret to A on the fifth fret, you can go from the G at the third fret to the A played on the open fifth string. As you learn to play the guitar you will hear the difference in sound you can get from playing the same notes at different places on the guitar.

You can learn the notes on the fretboard while you are playing the notes you can see on your fretboard chart. Learning which notes are which on the sheet music needs some book learning. If you find the notes of the guitar on the ledger lines, you will see that each note looks different according to its position on the fretboard. The way to begin to learn which note is which is by using the word F A C E to remember the notes in the spaces between the leger lines and the phrase Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit to remember the notes E G B D F which are drawn directly on the lines. If the prospect of learning the guitar notes in this way gives you a feeling of rising panic, remember to take only small steps.

Here is a great primer on the guitar notes at ABC Learn Guitar.


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13 Responses to “Learning How To Read Guitar Notes”

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