What Are All These Frets For?
You learned that the musical alphabet in our when we learned how to tune the guitar. But, how does that translate to the guitar besides tuning the strings?
That needs a little more explanation, so let’s take a step back.
In music, there are things called half-steps and whole-steps. For the guitar, half-steps equal one fret. And since it takes two halves to make a whole, a whole-step is two frets.
Most of our notes (A-B-C-D-E-F-G) are a whole step (two frets) apart. To be more specific, A-B, C-D, D-E, F-G, and G-A are all a whole step, or two frets, apart. That means that if C was on fret one, then D would be on fret three (1+2=3 dummy).
There are only two note combos that are a half-step apart: B-C and E-F. If E was on fret two then F would be on fret three (2+1=3 duh).
Now how do you apply that to the guitar?
Remember your string names?
6. E
5. A
4. D
3. G
2. B
1. E
On each string play every note that’s there. If you’re playing on either E string, the notes would be as follows:
E= Open String
F= Fret 1
G= Fret 3
A= Fret 5
B= Fret 7
C= Fret 8
D= Fret 10
The next E (same string)= Fret 12
Now do that same thing on each string. Remember the different note combos and the half and whole step relationships. Check out the image below.
But why do you skip some frets?
Those are sharps and flats. The sharp sign looks like a hashtag or number sign (#). The flat sign looks like a lower-case B (b).
When you skip some frets like in the whole-step note combos, you have either a sharp or flat between those notes.
For A-B, you either have an A# or a Bb between them. They are the same note. This applies to the other notes as well. do the same thing I did with A-B (C#-Db, D#-Eb, F#-Gb, G#-Ab).
For right now you don’t need to think about this. We’ll discuss this in more detail in a later post. For right now focus on memorizing what note combos have a half step (one fret apart) and whole step (two steps apart). Practice that on each string so you know what notes are there.