Intro to Notation

First let us get a frame of reference which we will be using throughout this course.  First let’s name the strings.  As you hold the guitar you will notice that the thickest (and lowest sounding string) is closest to your head.  As you strum down, the strings get thinner and higher sounding.  The names of the strings are as follows:

High E----------------------------------------------------------------

b----------------------------------------------------------------------

g----------------------------------------------------------------------

D---------------------------------------------------------------------

A---------------------------------------------------------------------

Low E----------------------------------------------------------------

Next let’s name the fingers we are going to use:

 

Fretting Hand            

Picking Hand

There will be two major notation forms I will be using.  Tablature and Chord diagrams.

Chord diagrams look like this:

On chord diagrams, the thick line at the top is the Nut, the horizontal lines are frets, and each of the 6 vertical lines are guitar strings.  The ‘x’ on the low E string means that you do not play that string, or you lightly touch the string so that it does not make a sound other than a dull thud.  The ‘o’ above the nut means that string is played open.  The numbers correlate to the fingers on the fretting hand.

So in the  “C major” chord shown above, the low E string is not played, on the A string, you place your 3^rd finger (ring finger) just behind the 3^rd fret.  On the D string you place your 2^nd finger (middle finger) behind the second fret.  The g string is played open.  On the b string you place your 1^st finger (index finger) behind the first fret, and then play the high e string open.

Tablature is a slightly different beast.  Here the strings are horizontal rather than vertical like in the chord diagram.  This allows the musician to read the music across the page as you might read a book or standard sheet music. 

Tablature looks like this:

There is a lot of information on this.  First, we can see at the top, that there are 120 beats per minute.  I will try to always include standard notation along with the tablature.  It is good to get used to trying to read the standard notation, although at this time this is not something I’m going to cover in these lessons.  But it is important to see the two 4’s. 

This piece of music is in 4/4 time.  This is the most common.  The top number tells us how many beats there are per measure.  The bottom number tells us which note gets the beat.  In this case there are 4 - ¼ notes per measure.

In tablature, the strong on the bottom is the low E and the top line is the high e string.  The numbers on the lines correspond to which fret is played on that particular string.

So, the first bar is four strums of all open “0” strings.  The second measure and first half of the third involves quarter notes being plucked in order from lowest string to highest, then the final measure and a half are plucked in reverse back to the low E.

Now that we have that out of the way, we are ready.  The next post will be lesson 1.  Let’s get our hands a bit dirty!