Guitar Tricks Online Guitar Lessons

The Musical Alphabet

 

First let's look at our major scale pattern and I'll show you how the alphabet can help you memorize the note names within it.

We started out with a one octave pattern of the major scale. Then we extended it in the lower octave with three lower notes. Now let's start in the 7th fret of the D-string. This note is an A.

Once you've memorized that note you can continue up the scale and simply use the alphabet: A B C D E F G. After G it repeats, we have our A again.

Now this is your very first introduction to a huge topic, so we're merely scraping the surface here and it's very likely that you'll have a million questions right now and that's a good thing. Just go with me and trust that it'll all fall into place eventually.

Anders Mouridsen
Instructor Anders Mouridsen
Tutorial:
Learning Note Names
Styles:
Any Style
Difficulty:
print notation download lesson open guitar tuner
The Musical Alphabet song notation

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Questions & Answers

10 months ago
Hi there, how does this knowledge tie in with "fretting" and identifying notes on the fretboard as shown in Chapter 1, Fretting notes? D7 frett = A in terms of A Major scale? Does it depend on what scale or chord you want to play? A tad confused. Thanks!
Josh Workman 9 months ago

Hi Brock, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, so I'll try my best! We learn scales in various positions and patterns in order to eventually play melodies, improvise, and also know where all the various chords are around the neck, since chords are simply stacked notes that can be found in various scales. If you haven't learned how scales are constructed, maybe check out this lesson: https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial/2010. I hope this helps!