Today we're going to be talking about the notes
in the open position of the guitar.
And what I mean by that is the notes found in the first
four frets of all of the strings.
Now, hopefully you guys' memory is serving you well
and you remember your note circle.
And you remember all of the notes in the note circle.
So what I'm going to be looking at now,
is I'm just going to show you a quick little exercise
that I want you to do where you're naming the names
of the notes on each string in the first four frets.
Then I'm going to show you a little game,
where we can work out what the notes are
in all of the chords that we've played so far.
Now I'm not going into the theory of that now,
it's just a really good exercise to get you counting
your tones and semitones.
And also it might give you a little bit of insight
into what notes you're playing
when you're playing some chords.
It's a very good thing to do, good for the head.
So, here we go, going to a closeup now.
We're looking at here, first of all, at the open E string,
which is this one. We know that that's the note E.
So we know that the note in the first fret,
is F
Next one will be F# or Gb
G
and G# or Ab.
On the next string
we have B
C
C# or Db
D
D# or Eb
Open third string is G
First fret: G# or Ab
Second fret: A
Third fret: A# or Bb
Fourth fret: the note B
Open fourth string is the note D
First fret: D# or Eb
Second fret is the note E
Third fret is the note F
Fourth fret is the note F# or Gb
Open fifth string is the note A
Then we've got the first fret, is A# or Bb
Second fret is the note B
Third fret is the note C
Fourth fret is the note C# or Db
Lastly we've got the thick E string, which is of course
the same as the thin E string:
Open is E
First fret is F
Second fret is F#
Third fret is G
Fourth fret is G#.
So that's just showing you all of the notes in the open position.
It's worth having a little bit of a look at the chart
on the website and just, if you're interested, in seeing
how those notes relate back to some sheet music as well.
It can be kind of interesting fot those of you
who have some experience reading note music.
But I don't really recommend reading dots as a regular beginner.
Only if you, yeah, kind of more advanced students
wanting to play jazz and film music and stuff like that.
So, the little exercise I want you to do now,
and you can do this with every single chord
that you're learned so far. I want you to pick a chord,
any one. I'm going to start with the chord G.
So, put your G chord down.
And then you're going to name
every note that you're playing in the G chord.
So if we start here, looking at the sixth string,
we can see that the open, this is the E string open,
first fret would be the note F.
Second fret would be the note F#,
third fret would be the note G. So you can write down
"OK, in a G chord, the thickest note, thickest string,
is the note G". Then we look at the next string.
And we go: that was an A, one up that's an A#.
Another one up, oh, that's a B. So far, we've got G and B.
We look at the next string, that's open.
So that's going to be a D. We look at the next string.
That's open third string, that's going to be a G.
We look at the next string, that's open as well,
that's going to be B and then we look at the final note,
well, it's going to be the same as the outside one,
which was the note G.
So interestingly, if you look at the notes now that you've got,
for your G chord, you've got G, B, D, G, B, G.
Strange, that. Our G chord actually only appears to be
made up of three notes that keep repeating,
and that's the notes G, B and D.
Very interesting.And something that you'll find happens
nearly all the time. It's a thing called a triad.
A three-note chord.
But, we don't have to time to cover that one right now,
but I'm just trying to sow the seeds of interest,
in a little bit of music theory.
But this will happen, no matter what chords you play.
You discovered there are certain notes that get played,
and most of the time, you'll just have three or four notes,
with a couple of repeats. So if we look at say, C chord.
We have nothing on the thickest string, because we're not
going to play that one.
The next note we have, this is the note C.
Which was originally the A string: A#, B, C.
The next note: this note's the note E.
Because it went: D, D#, E.
We've got an open G string.
We've got here the first fret. That was the B string,
up one fret makes it the note C.
And an open E string.
So we end up with the notes: C, E, G, C, E.
Strangely, we've got C, E, G, C, E. So it's actually still
just made up of the notes C, E and G.
And they repreat themselves.
So part of the little exercise I want you to do now,
is just go through, pick a chord, any chord,
everyone's a winner.
And work out what the notes are in that chord.
Maybe write them down,
but you don't have to keep doing,
I'm trying to specifically get you to do it.
I just want you to get a bit of experience
in counting the notes up so you can work out any note
that you're playing in that open position.
Very, very useful skill that's going to become
more and more useful, the more you play guitar.
So, hope you had a little bit of fun with that.
Now let's get to checking out some more playing stuff.