Plot Notes on your Guitar and Keyboard

I always loved music and dabbled with a lot of musical instruments. I was a little late in catching up on the theory of music though and understanding the western world constructs of music. I am trying to put down inferences I have drawn over days of learning the theoretical   world of music with mu Guitar and Key board.

"Disclaimer: I DO NOT Claim to be an expert. Nor do I believe the technique I have given below is the best way to go about things. This helped me understand a thing or two and hence sharing it."

Some facts –

• Don’t get scared by jargon. 
• Don’t be lazy about understanding them either
• Most things in the world are logical
• Everything you want to learn will need some time from you.

Lesson one: Understand 12 notes and learn to write them on a keyboard

• Let us for a while assume there are 12 distinct sounds we can hear. 
• Each distinct sound is a note. 
• A keyboard has a set of white and black keys. 
• Each key is a note apart.  
• All white keys are pure (White stands for purity)

Now based on the image below let us assume the key just before the two sets of black keys to be C

All subsequent white pure keys are English Alphabets from A  to G

CDEFGAB respectively (7 Notes)

So where are the remaining 5 notes we talked about?? We just covered the white keys. The inventor of a keyboard made black keys for a reason!! 

Now all black notes adjacent to a pure note on the right have a symbol  #(Sharp) added to it. 

Lets now begin from C 

• C and then C#
• D and then D#
• E and then (oops no black key) so we just move on
• F and then F#
• G and then G#
• A and then A# 
• B and then Oops no black key again.

"So remember E and B have no adjacent black keys"

Thus our 12 notes are:

If you get this basic construct in your head – you will go a long way in understanding instruments. If you have heard people talk about flats – just ignore it for now.
So what have we got so far?

• 12 Notes
• E and B have no Sharps (#)
• White Keys are Pure

Now lets figure out how to identify notes on a keyboard?? 

• It is scientific and easy. 
• All adjacent keys on a keyboard are a semi-tone apart. In simple terms
• Frequency difference between(C and C#) = Frequency Difference between (D and D#) = Frequency Distance between (E and F)

Now on a key board you get adjacent frequencies between two adjacent keys. Thus if you mark your reference as C (Key before the 2 black keys) and you remember E and B have no Sharps – you can pretty much list down the name of each key on the key board. 

This is your first lesson in marking Keys on your Key Board.

Lesson 2: How do you mark notes on the fretboard of a guitar?

I assume you know some basics of a Guitar which is that a regular guitar has 6 strings starting from a thick one which gets thinner as you go along. Also it has long bars called frets which partition the guitar fret board. I will not spend time explaining strings and frets in this exercise. With an assumption that you have some basic understanding of the same I will jump to explain how keys can be identified on your Guitar Fret Board.

I am going to use the image below to help you identify the same.

Now just like in the keyboard, the distance between two keys was a semi-tone apart. In the guitar, the distance between two adjacent frets is a semi-tone apart. 

"Remember again (E and B have no sharps)"

Now lets start with the first string E - An open string. So if you press the first string on the first fret, you will actually move a semitone upwards which lands it to F and then moving on the first string we get F# G G# A A# and so on. Refer to this image again.

If you apply the same logic to all strings, you will actually be able to plot the image above rather rapidly. Once you have this plotted you can observe some interesting facts.

• All Open Strings are a pure note. 
• The 5th Fret again has all pure notes. 
• The 11th Fret has all Sharp Notes 
• Clearly since we have 12 notes, the 13th Fret starts to repeat the pattern again and will be a pure set of notes again. 

So hopefully now- you are able to identify Notes on your Keyboard and on your Guitar. 

How will you now remember this all?

• Paste these images around you, make them your desktop images and just observe them every day. 
• You will find a lot of fascinating patterns.  
• Play this game: Try and find all pure notes on your guitar and play them. 
• Pick one string a day and move upwards loudly calling out the note you are playing. 

In the next lesson, I will explain to you how to remember notes used in a particular chord and use these images to reconcile what you are playing. I have these images nicely plotted on a spreadsheet. Please drop me a note and I can send it across to you.