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Acoustic Guitar Lesson – Learning the Notes of the Guitar

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Learn the Notes on the Guitar

Familiarizing yourself with the notes on the guitar is an important part of guitar playing.  I know it isn’t the most exciting part, but if you take time during your practice routines to learn them, you will be a better musician because of it.

Instead of just popping up a chart with all of the notes on it, I am going to explain how you can find all of the notes on your own.  It is more interesting this way and will actually help you burn the notes into your memory better.

The Basics

First let us talk about the basics. There are 12 notes and they are represented by the first seven letters of the alphabet with the addition of certain symbols that denote a flat or sharp note:

Notes of the Guitar

As you can see from the image above, the notes start to repeat themselves after the G#/Ab, back to the A again.  The distance between the first A and the last A is called an octave. The notes A B C D E F G are called natural notes.  The rest of the notes that have the # or b symbol are called flats and sharps or accidentals.

On the guitar, the notes are played by either striking a string or pressing down on a fret.  The diagram below illustrates  the notes of the strings of your guitar:

Guitar Strings Notes

The distance between any two notes is called an Interval. There are various kinds of intervals in music, but lets keep things simple and talk about the most widely discussed intervals for beginner guitarists called Half Steps and Whole Steps.

Let’s take a look at the notes again:

Notes of the Guitar

If we start at A and want to find the note that is a half step away, it would be A#/Bb.   To find the note that is a whole step away from A, we would jump two spots up to the B.

Let’s take this same concept and apply it to the frets of the guitar.   Grab your guitar and hold it like you are getting ready to play.  Let’s start at the Low E String. That is the thickest string on your guitar. When you play that string without pressing down on any frets, you are playing an E note.

Now to go a half step up on your guitar to the F note, we would press down on the first fret of the low E string. Now press down on the second fret of the low E string (a half step from F) and you are playing an F#/Gb.  To go a whole step from F to G on your guitar, you would go up two frets and press down on the third fret of the Low E String. So, a half step on your guitar is one fret, while a whole step on your guitar is two frets.

Let’s do another example on the A string and then I am leaving the rest for you to do.

The next string down from the Low E String is the A string.  This means when you strum this string without pressing down on any frets, you are playing an A note.  Now to go a half step up on your guitar to the A#/Bb note, we would press down on the first fret of the A string.  Now press down on the second fret of the A string ( a half step up from A#/Bb) and you are playing a B note.

Is this making sense yet?    Hopefully I have explained this well enough.  You should now be able to name every note on your guitar using the exact same process for all of the strings.  Do this at least once a day during your practice session and you will memorize every note on the guitar before you know it.

Enjoy and Happy Guitar Playing!

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Comments

  1. i just wanna say thanks you helped me play guitar and i really enjoyed learning it you explained it really well… i was just wanting to know how to tune the guitar? and how will i know its tuned all the way?

  2. Thanks for telling me were to go to get my guitar tuned it helpd me alot…do you have any on songs like how to play songs?

  3. this makes so much sense. I like it .I have always wanted to learn how to play guitar, and now it is starting to make sense.

  4. Hi Charity,

    You are most welcome….

    Yes, I have a lot of lessons on how to play songs posted on this site.
    Below is a link to 20 songs that are fairly easy to learn:
    ===> http://www.learn-acoustic-guitar.com/20-easy-acoustic-guitar-tabs-and-songs-you-can-start-learning-now

    I have a number of other song lessons on various other genres:

    Country guitar songs:
    ===> http://www.learn-acoustic-guitar.com/7-easy-country-guitar-songs-learn-to-play-country-songs-with-the-guitar

    Christian Guitar Songs:
    ===> http://www.learn-acoustic-guitar.com/top-10-easy-christian-guitar-songs-for-beginners

    Rock Guitar Songs:
    ===> http://www.learn-acoustic-guitar.com/easy-rock-guitar-songs-learn-how-to-play-rock-guitar

    Hope that helps!

  7. i love this course it is the first one i could find that i actually understand, i like that it starts from where you need to start, and it doesnt jump around like other courses i have looked at you are just so awesome

  9. hey thank you so much I’m practicing every day around 5-6h when I have the time and every time I have your website open and looking trough it to learn new things I’m still a beginner and I see my skills growing very fast thanks to this site. Just some videos here and there that are not working but besides that everything is very best thank you for all the time and effort you put into this, I also like the guitar lessons you send through email thx again man and rock on!

  10. I’m very happy that I found somebody thats willing to help people on learning how to play guitar. I feel motivated to keep learning. With all my heart thank you so mutch

  11. Didnt make sense to me at first but now i get it!
    Your really good…
    Thank you for all the help!1

  13. Halo Sir.
    I really appreciate your efforts of making everybody understand the basics of guitar.I am personally happy about it especially the lesson on knowing the notes.It is explained so well that it becomes fun to find out the next note!
    I love classical music so much.I kindly request you to include some lessons on fingering-The right hand.Keep it up and thank you once more for the good work.Cheers!

  14. Thanx!

    I know you hear that a lot but really, I appreciate your effort! I’ve so often asked my brother to show me or at least try and explain to me how the notes work on a guitar and he just tried to teach me chords which I didn’t grasp because I was determined to UNDERSTAND the notes. It’s so simple & you are the best!!!

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