How To Be Amazing At Guitar...Step One.

So for my first lesson post, I wanted pure awesomeness. You know....three octave sweeps, the virtues of placing tasteful diminished arpeggios in the chorus of every pop song you play on (trust me, at some point, I've tried), perhaps how to two-hand tap through an entire four minute song...amazing musical attributes such as these, littered with explosions, car chases, and licks that will make your guitar literally combust on the spot!

But.....then I realized I may have my priorities in the wrong spot (realize I said "may" - I could still be convinced otherwise). Instead, we are going to learn notes! Cool? Not really. Exciting? Not exactly. However this could potentially be the most important guitar lesson you've had.

Here's the deal...you gotta learn your instrument. Not just how to play some power chords, or the cool new solo you just heard on the radio. All great things in their own right, but simply add a little understanding of how your guitar actually works and you'll be miles ahead of everybody else...and quickly at that. So hang in there for a second and trust me on this one.

I've seen this presented a lot of different ways, but this (to me) seems to be the most concise, and the easiest to understand. So check it out...

In music, you can kind of divide notes into two groups...like the normal ones, and the not so normal ones. The "normal" ones are going to be called natural notes...and these are literally just the letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. That's it. The others, the "abnormal" ones are called sharps and flats (Sharp, the #, just means to move a note one fret "higher" and Flat, the b, just means to move a note one fret lower). So for example, A#, Gb, C#....these are all in the "abnormal" category, and they are called accidentals.

Hanging in there? It's kinda boring I know, but we're almost done. For our sake, we're just going to deal with the natural notes. Now, to find/figure out any note on the entire guitar, here's the big rule:

ALL NATURAL NOTES ARE TWO FRETS APART EXCEPT: B-C and E-F (these are always back to back).

I'm serious, this is huge...and all you really need to know to figure out all of your notes. Follow me here...let's say you want to figure out the 8th fret on the A string. Start with the open string and follow my rule:

The open string is obviously A. Now like we said, all natural notes are two frets apart...so it's two frets to get to B (we're now on the 2nd fret). B-C was the exception...these are back to back, so only one fret to get to C (now at the 3rd fret). Two frets to get to D (5th fret). Two frets to get to E (7th fret). And finally the other exception E-F are back to back, so it's one fret to get to F (8th fret). There ya go...the 8th fret on the A string is an F.

We'll just deal with that for now (the in-between notes are your accidentals...if it's one fret lower or behind a natural note, add a flat to the letter name, and if it's one fret higher or above a natural note, add a sharp to it). If that doesn't make sense, let me know and I can clear that up for you, but for now, get out your guitar and try to figure out some notes. What's the 10th fret on the E string? 4th fret on the G string? 15th fret on the D string? Let me know how it works for you...

Anyway, back to the burning guitars and explosions for you in the next lesson...I promise to follow up with some ridiculous sweeps, but for now...keep me (and your teacher) happy....I'm sick of telling you to play the "third fret power chord on the E string." Heh heh heh...LEARN THOSE NOTES!!!

See ya soon...

-Beej