Finding Notes on the Fretboard
The Open Strings As you may know if you play the guitar, the open strings are E, A, D, G, B, and E (Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good-Bye Eddie!). We can represent these with a chart like this: The open strings of the guitar The lowercase "e" is for the high E string, so we can differentiate it from the low "E." Whole Steps and Half Steps To find notes above the open strings, we first need to understand "Whole Steps" and "Half Steps." A half step is the smallest distance in pitch we can travel 1 using our Western tuning system. On the guitar, that distance is simply one fret. For example, from the second fret to the third fret is a half step, and from the first fret to the open string (fret number "zero") is a half step. A whole step is simply two half steps. Every note has a whole step gap above it, with the exception of B and E, where it's a half step. They're comfortable "BE"ing themselves. The A String Let's start with...