Make your own song

Acoustic guitar seems to be the songwriters most favorite instrument. As I say in my previous post and articles, it is because the acoustic guitar is very handy, light, cheap and requires no electricity to play. But the learning process is tough. The most likely reasons is when you do not know where to put the notes and what are the notes in the guitar.

To start with, acoustic guitar is simply a six string instrument. These six strings have notes, they are called OPEN NOTES, because of the fact that they can be played without pressing your fingers in the fret. It is extremely important you know the name of these open notes because it is one way to identify the rest of the notes in the acoustic guitar.

Another thing that is very important to remember, is that guitar scale is CHROMATIC. “Chromatic” means it is played half-increasing or decreasing. I suggest to read this lesson first regarding Theory about musical scales. The objective is to get to know “chromatic scales”.

Below is the close-up view of the acoustic guitar sound hole with the strings:

These are the pitch names/notes of the acoustic guitar open strings. Take note that the same name of strings for electric guitar and other six string guitars.
Since it is chromatic nature, it will increase half-step by every single increase in frets. Acoustic guitar has around 20~22 frets (depending on acoustic guitar you bought).

So for example if it is treble high E (1st string), the name of the open note is “mi”. So pressing one fret will raise a half step pitch (F or fa). The same principle applies with different strings. Below are complete guide to all notes in the acoustic guitar:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Right on the left are the open note strings, E (mi), B (ti), G (so), D (re), A (la), E (mi)

The numbers on the upper portion of the image are the fret numbers of the guitar. You can always review my musical guide in knowing chromatic scales here. By looking at the guide above, you can always know the notes of the guitar at any particular guitar fret number and corresponding strings to be played. Also I have included a complete courses on chord formation and concepts, please look at the site main navigation.

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Make your own song:Free Music Lessons and Songwriting Courses

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 am and is filed under Guitar playing tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.