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Now we're going to talk a little bit about the fundamental building block
of Western music.
It's called a half step.
In Western music, we have 12 half steps.
Now, conveniently enough, the half steps correspond to the frets on our guitar.
If we were to play an open E string, a low string, our sixth string,
and we were to count 12 frets, or 12 half steps.
[MUSIC]
We wind up 12 half steps higher on another E.
So we have 12 half steps, and then above that, in a different octave,
we have another 12, and it keeps going until we can no longer hear it,
I think dogs can hear it.
Conversely, below those are another 12, and another 12,
and it keeps going on til we can no longer hear it.
Conveniently enough, those 12 steps, as I mentioned,
correspond to all 12 frets of the fretboard.
Now, we've given those 12 steps letter names
from our alphabet, along with some other symbols.
Now, we're going to take a look now at what we call half step wheel.
And we're going to actually take a look at how those fit in the grand scheme of some
of the music that we're going to make.
We'll talk about half steps and we're going to talk about whole steps.
Now we're going to go straight to our little half step wheel.
Don't let this confuse you, it looks a lot more complicated than it really is.
If we start right here with a C, in between the C and
the next letter of the alphabet, which is the D, we have,
if we're going clockwise, which is higher, or sharper, we will have a C sharp.
In between the D, and the E, we have a D sharp.
In between the E and the F there is technically no sharp or flat,
whichever way you're going.
As we go around, we come to the conclusion that there are sharps and
flats between every note except the B and the C and the E and the F.
If you're going counter clockwise,
there is a flat below the note.
So you'll go from B to B flat, then A, then A flat, G, G flat, F.
There's no flat between the F and the E, technically speaking, and
then under the E flat we continue.
These 12 steps in Western music divide the musical
pallet in a way that allows is to create melodies and
chords that sound pleasing to us.
Now, we're going to go back to the guitar here for a second and
we're going to play a few notes.
And again, if you think this is a complicated way to think of it,
I'm going to show you an easy way now to remember it.
There's a sharp above every note except B And
E, and there's a flat below every note except F and
C, that's an easy way to think of it.
Now, using this, it is possible for us to easily figure out,
given the fact that we know the open strings,
we can figure out just about any note.
Now I'm going to start off with the E string, open E string.
The next note would be an F.
And we can look at that on our half step wheel.
The next note would be an F because we're moving clockwise on the half step wheel.
Then the next note would be an F sharp.
Then the next note would be a G.
The next note would be G sharp.
Then A, then A sharp, then B, and
remember there is no sharp above B, we go directly to C.
Then C-sharp, the D, then D-sharp, and then we're back at E.
And if we listen to the open E string, and we listen to the E at
the 12th fret, we can see they almost sound, the same.
They have the same quality, only one sound a little bit higher.
If we do that again, let's go from the open E string,
We go to the F, the F sharp, to the G,
the G sharp, then we get here to the A.
Now remember when we were tuning a guitar
we matched this A with the open string A.
So now we can conclude that there's some notes on
guitar that is actually repeated on other strings.
Now, as confusing as that might sound, that is the feature of guitar
that allows us to play combinations of notes which are called chords.
We'll be covering chords later on after we cover scales, basic scales.
The most important thing and the easy way to remember this,
is that all ascending notes have a sharp note above them except B and E.
All descending notes have a flat note between them, except C and F.
So in between each note, each note has either a sharp or
a flat above or below it.
The sharp or the flat is often referred to as an accidental.
In addition, the word flat can also be used to define going lower in music,
and the word sharp can be used to define going higher in music.
And you might be able to remember that from when we were tuning the guitar where
we needed to make a note sharper, or we need to make a note flatter in order to
make it agree with another note to which we were matching.
So now we have an understanding of what a half-step is and
how it corresponds to each of the frets that we have.
So one half-step, one fret.
A whole step, of course It conveniently, is two frets.
So if we were to start, let's start with this note, F,
which is actually a half step above our open E on the sixth string.
We'll start with an F here.
I'm going to play a note a whole step above this note.
Now this note So we're going to skip over frets to the next note, will will be a G.
Now we're going to go another whole step above that note.
We're going to skip over the half step, and go to the next two fret space,
which will be an A.
Now if we want to note another whole step above that,
we move up simply two frets to B.
A whole step above that note, we're going to jump over our C,
we're going to wind up on C sharp.
Another whole step above that note, we're going to jump over D,
we wind up on D sharp.
One more whole step, and we're back
an octave higher than the F that we started on.
So we have now half steps.
And we have whole steps.
You can hear how that's beginning to sound a little bit like a melody.
It's a combination of half steps and whole steps that make some of
the scales that we're going to be covering later on this course.