Fretboard Visualization and a Review of Music Theory Basics

The goal of any aspiring guitarist must be to eventually be aware of your fretboard and freely play. That said, this is cultivated and achieved within the mind and away from your instrument.

The challenge for us guitarists is the overwhelming choice of notes and the fact that we can play, for instance, the open first string “E” pitch in five different locations. A keyboard player plays this same pitch on only one key. It’s this duplication of pitches on the guitar which could be understood as a disadvantage. But is it, really? Perhaps it would help to view the many tones or pitches as the guitar’s greatest performing advantages.

Some Basic Musical Definitions by Way of Review:

Remember we learned in previous lessons, that music is made up of pitch and rhythm, to put it simply. We READ this pitch and rhythm through notations on a staff or group of lines and spaces (otherwise known as reading notes). These lines and spaces are always counted from the bottom up and seven letters are used to represent pitch: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

Space notes are: F, A, C, and E. Memorize this set of letters so that you can quickly recognize notes on the staff. Think up a clever rhyme to help you. Spaces are pretty easy – just spell the word “FACE”. Now, the lines take a little more imagination. Think of a great memory aid for (lines upward): E, G, B, D, and F. “Every goat bites dogs and fleas”. Okay, not too inspiring – but hey whatever works!

The very first symbol written on a staff is the clef sign. Guitar music is written in the treble or G clef. This clef circles the second line of the staff where the note G is located.

So, pitch is the relative highness or lowness of sound. And sounds are represented by notes on a staff beginning with a treble clef sign. Got it? Now too hard, you say?

Rhythm

Rhythm is how you organize your notes. One of the most basic aspects of rhythm is the pulse, which is a steady stream of beats (or counts). A pulse is typically divided into strong and weak beats that repeat during a piece of music. So by seeing your staff divided into measures by bar lines we have a set amount of beats per measure, supplying rhythm.

Usually the first beat of every measure is accented a bit (played slightly louder) than the rest of the measure. Notice this next time you tap your foot to any song and pick out the strong and weak beats.

Music is not just groups of nonstop notes. There must be silences. Remember Part 2’s admonition about the importance of rests between the notes? Common periods of rest are called whole rests, half rests, quarter rests and eighth rests with corresponding whole measure periods of silence, 2 beats of silence, 1 beat of silence and ½ beat of silence in the case of the eighth rest.

We saw the similarity between the symbolism of notes and rests. In the case of notes, there are different parts. The head of the note can be hollow or filled, depending on its type. Any note whose duration (length of time it is held) is smaller than a whole note will have a stem attached to its note head. Any note whose duration is smaller than a quarter note will have a flag attached to the stem and two or more flagged notes grouped together form a beam set. Stem direction can go up or down depending on where the note is placed on the staff for easier readability and fit.

So, whole notes have no stem and are hollow. Half notes have a stem and are hollow while quarter notes are black with a stem. Eighth notes are the faster ones and are black with a stem and flag unless they are connected with other eighth notes then they would have a beam between them. Look at any sheet music and try to practice identifying these variances.