Hello people! How are you doing?
It's Justin here!
Are you ready for a little bit of music theory?
That's not really music theory.
All we're gonna talk about today is
the notes that we use in western music and
so it's kind of the beginning of music theory
'cause if you don't know this thing, you're not going to have any chance of
understanding any music theory ever.
So this is the most basic thing.
It's really practical on the guitar
and you really need to know this stuff.
So, first thing: it's called the note circle.
And you'll see that it is very much like a circle,
the way the notes go round and around and around
over the different octaves, we're going to get to that in a sec.
Now in order to learn this,
it's really, really, really loads easier if you can see the note circle.
Now we may well figure a cool way of putting it up on the screen
like next to me, there or there or there or something,
but in case we don't,
it would be really good for you to go to the website.
Actually, it's more useful to go to the website anyway
and that way you can look at the diagram for the note circle on the screen.
Ok, so let's assume that you've just paused and you've gone off
and you're now looking at the note circle.
First thing I want you to notice
is that we have 7 notes in western music, generally.
And there is an exception that I will explain in a sec.
But those notes are: A, B, C, D, E, F and G.
That's it, yeah?
You don't see H or I or J or K or anything.
However, sometimes if you happen to be a German
you may well see H sometimes.
Now, I'm not going to go through what all of that is,
'cause it's just going to confuse everyone.
So you Germans, you have to go and ask somebody to explain the H to you,
cause I'm not going to do it here, but I might put little sidenote on the website actually,
on the webpage, so you can go and check that out.
But for everyone else, now you only have A, B, C, D, E, F, G and that's it.
Now this will be the same as the kind of the white notes on the piano
not that you're playing piano, this is a guitar lesson
but bear with me for just a second.
But I am sure you're aware that there's white notes and black notes on the piano
and the black notes are referred to generally as the sharps (#) and flats (♭).
Now, a sharp means that a regular note is made one semi tone higher.
So, if we have an A note, let's say,
there's A note at the 5th fret of the 6th string (plays).
That's the note A.
If I want to play A# I move it up so the note becomes one fret,
which is the same thing as a semi tone,
higher (plays).
And that would be the equivalent of one step around the note circle.
If you look at the note circle you'll see A
and if you go around clockwise around there one step,
you'll see that you get to the note A# (plays).
That was A to A#.
If you went the other way, you went counter-clockwise or anti-clockwise
around the note circle from A, you'd get to A♭.
And a flat makes a note go down in pitch by one semitone or one fret,
a semitone and a fret are the same thing.
So we'd have here (plays) A, if we go down a semitone (plays),
we get to A♭.
Now, really good way of remembering the sharp and flat thing
is that if you sit on something sharp, you would jump up,
so sharp makes you go up
and flat, is a flat tire.
If you get a flat tire on your car or your bike or whatever
the car will go down.
You often say the tires gone down, been let down.
So flat goes down, sharp goes up.
Everytime, no matter what you are, whatever note you're on,
if you're on a C (plays) and you want to go C# (plays),
it's gone up.
Now you could go (plays) down one from C
and that would be C♭.
But that would also be another note.
This is where it gets a little bit confusing.
So if you look around the note circle now,
you'll notice that it doesn't always have a sharp and a flat between every note.
In fact B and C, there's no note between.
There's no such thing as a B# or a C♭,
or there is, but I'm going to come back to it in a sec,
and E and F, there's no semitone between those at all.
So as you're counting around you'll see that it goes:
A right at the top, then the next one
it goes to A# / B♭.
Hmm, what's that? A# and B♭ are actually exactly the same thing.
So you can see that if you went up from A,
you went A and then you went one step clockwise around the note circle
you'd get to A#.
If you go to the next note, you'd get to B.
And if you go backwards from B one note, you get to B♭.
So therefore A# and B♭ are exactly the same note.
And if you really want to impress your mates or your school teacher,
you can call these things an enharmonic equivalent,
which means two notes that have different names,
but sound the same. Enharmonic equivalent.
Big word, definitely will get you extra points in your music theory essay.
Anyway, so as you're looking around the note circle,
you need to know a couple of things.
First of all, semitone and tone.
And a semitone is one step around the note circle.
And that could be from A to A#,
or B♭ to B, or B to C.
It's only a semitone, as long as it's one step around the note circle, it's a semitone.
And a semitone, is the same as the equivalent to one fret on the guitar,
so each one going, up one fret, up one fret is one semitone.
Another thing that you really need to know about is a thing called a tone.
And a tone is the same as two semitones.
So if you go two steps around the note circle
you would get, be moving a tone, and that could be,
say from A to B, that would be a tone
'cause you've gone: A, A#, B
or you could go from E to F#
'cause you'd go E, F, F#.
So E to F# would be a tone.
Now if you want to get more into this
I kind of don't like doing this,
but I've got a Practical Music Theory download pack
that you can get, which and this is the very start of that
and that takes you through like the idea of the note circle,
how to use the tones and semitones to make up the major scale
and where chords come from
and how the chords go together
with the scale to form a key and all of that sort of stuff.
So if you want to get into that from about now
it will be ok for you to start your little journey learning some music theory
And it is really, really rewarding.
Now I'm going to talk a little bit in a future lesson
about using these tones and semitones,
the knowledge of tones and semitones
and the knowledge of the note circle
in order to find different notes on the guitar neck
which is a really, really useful thing.
But the one thing you might want to try,
just yourself now, just as a little exercise,
is counting up and down the strings
Now you already know that the thinnest string
is the note E (plays).
So if we went up one fret from there (plays),
we'd be on to the note F.
Because that's the next note around on the note circle
and the next one step up (plays),
would be the note F# or G♭.
One more note (plays) would be G
one note higher than that, would be G# or A♭,
that's the same note of course,
up one more (plays) and you are at A.
And so on, you can count up all of the strings
So, it's a good way of just kind of
counting through your note, the letters, in the note circle
It's really really important,
it's very basic kind of theory, if you like,
But its really kind of just musical knowledge
that is pretty essential if you're going to progress on the instrument.
We're going to be using this quite a few different ways,
even before the end of this course,
so it's not just for advanced stuff.
So I hope your brain has't exploded,
and you feel ok with this.
It is fairly straightforward information this.
If you're finding it a bit confusing,
just read through it a few times
make sure that you've got your understanding proper
about your tones and semitones
and I'll see you for another lesson very soon.
Take care, dudes. Bye, bye!