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PHIL KEAGGY - Grammy nominated and seven-time Dove Award winner, is one of the world’s great guitar players and a pioneer in contemporary Christian music.
- November 18, 2016
- Guitar 101
No matter what your skill level as a musician is, you know that being able to understand guitar notes is vital to playing well. Practice and determination will get you far, but knowledge is key.
This is a good conversation and it seems there’s at least three languages for learning your guitar music. There’s the notation or sheet music which can look like hieroglyphics. Then, there’s tablature, which is just fret numbers on lines that represent the notes on the six guitar strings.
A similar but useful approach is naming the note and putting the fret number over it (for example A2 is the 2nd fret / 3rd string). Music is language. If you can speak it, you’re gonna succeed. If you understand it but can’t speak it, you’ll have marginal success. If you understand it AND speak it, you’ll become a great leader, teacher, and possibly a music industry favorite.
Reading Notation - Guitar Notes
If you start out as an ear player and try years later to discipline yourself to read notes, you may find that it’s a daunting task. You tend to hear it your way and blow right past the musical phrases. However, if you start out on notation and never develop your ear as you should, you might tend to lean on the notes and not express yourself or learn to ad-lib. There are traps in both, so it is best when you can do each well.
Music is math, we say. It’s basically like slices of a pizza. There’s the whole pizza, which represents a whole note or whole measure. Half the pizza is a 1/2 note. One slice is a quarter note, etc.
A music dictionary would be nice to have as there are dozens of symbols related to what is being expressed. There are dotted notes, rests, ties, repeat signs, and terms for dynamics. All of these must flow simultaneously as you read measure to measure.
You gotta start somewhere. Whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been playing a while, if you wanna learn to read, start with a basic guide like the link above or grab some books from your local bookstore. Lessons are essential as well. Get with a good teacher and he or she will have you sight reading in not time. Guitar notes are just music notes on guitar.
Reading Tablature - Guitar Notes
Reading tab is a quick way to learn the order of notes in your favorite song. There are tons of sites devoted to tabbing out the latest pop songs as well as classic guitar music from years past.
Reading tablature is fairly easy. You’re looking at six lines which represent the guitar strings. The top line is your little E string and the bottom line is your big E string. The numbers you see in tabs are either zero (for open strings) or fret numbers for that string. If the tab is simple or vague, that’s about all you’ll have to go on. The feel and other expressions you may have to interpret on your own.
If the tablature is aligned with notation and you have the correct finger numbers too, you can come closer to getting the music more exact. You see, the trouble with only using music notation is you don’t know which middle C, for example, they’re talking about as that note’s pitch is found in several strings of the guitar. Having the tab really helps to make that clear.
There are plenty of symbols unique to tablature that you’ll want to get familiar with. There are hammer-ons, pull-offs, pushes and pulls, vibrato, tapping, and a long list of others. If you’re trying to learn tablature, like notation, you want to start simple and grow with it. Tablature is a super great way to read guitar notes.
Memorizing the Fretboard - Guitar Notes
One method of reading guitar music not as widely used but should be is memorizing the notes on the fretboard. This goes beyond scales to knowing what note you’re on no matter where your finger falls. You could say this is more of a theory-based approach. For example, knowing an A2 is your root in the key of A or 3rd in the key of F is a big deal and your knowledge of the fretboard will guide you along your musical expression.
Try not to get too bogged down with this method. Don’t overanalyze the music. That would cause you to sound too thought out or predictable. However, knowing your fretboard allows you to choose the note you are hearing and avoid the notes that don’t work in that key.
A great exercise would be to tab out a musical phrase and then put the corresponding note name and fret number above each note. If you do this for a while, you start to identify the notes as your fingers move across the neck. If reading notation is just too much and you need a quick approach to learning the fretboard, this is the way.
Another truth about this is there is only one A2 on the fretboard and as long as the guitar is tuned standard, it will always be A2. So, memorizing all the notes on the guitar neck becomes a matter of just writing out more and more songs. A great approach to learning would be to write out the melodies of songs this way and learn to play the song. For example:
D0 G0 - B0 G0 B0 - A2 G0 - E2 D0
A - ma - zing Grace…how sweet…the sound…
You can write out all the notes to your favorite songs and your knowledge of the fretboard will grow more and more. You can see how knowing the note you're playing is a very helpful thing and, if you love mastering the instrument like you should, you’ll learn all aspects of guitar.
Finally, reading music, tablature, and fretboard memorization are all just blueprints or maps of songs. Ten times out of ten you’ll be reading someone else’s creation unless you write the score. So get some blank tablature paper, music sheets, or just a notebook and start writing your own guitar notes. It’s truly a beautiful thing to create a piece of music that’s yours and you’re proud of.
There are several components to learning guitar, with reading guitar notes being an important part. Something else you’ll want to check out is guitar lessons. Following a clear path to playing better is a sure way to improve your musicianship. At Pro Lessons, our professional instructors are experienced guitar players from bands touring the country. Find out how you can be our next student by clicking the banner below.
