Understanding The Musical Alphabet (beginner friendly)

The musical alphabet is the structure that all music is based around. It sounds quite complicated but once you understand a few basics it will all fall into place.

It’s important that you learn the musical alphabet early on in your guitar playing journey because it will help you take your playing to the next level. Keep reading to find out more about this interesting and useful subject.

What Is The Musical Alphabet?

All music is based around 7 letters which are A, B, C, D, E, F & G. Each letter corresponds to a note, a chord and a key. To make this easier to understand, let’s look at the 5th string on the guitar, the A string.

It’s called the A string because when you pluck the open string it produces an A note. But pressing different frets along the A string will produce different notes. Let’s look at every note on the A string from the open string up to the 12th fret.

Notes On The A String

Now, there are a few things that you might have noticed about this chart which I’ll explain now… 

Sharps & Flats

Some frets appear to be producing 2 different notes; this is all part of the structure of the musical alphabet and something that can be used to our advantage as we get more confident in our guitar playing abilities.

For now what you need to know is that there are only 7 natural notes which are the ones I mentioned earlier; A, B, C, D, E, F & G. In between some of those notes are single notes but they can have different names depending on the key or chord you’re playing.

For instance; the 1st fret of the A string produces an A# note but it’s also a Bb note. It’s the same note but depending on the key you’re playing in, it will fit in with 2 different sets of notes. 

Sharps raise the note by one fret whilst flats lower the note by one fret. A# is one fret higher than A and Bb is one fret lower than B.

The other thing you might have noticed is that there are no sharps (#) or flats (b) between certain notes. Now this can be confusing but there is an easy way to remember which notes have no sharps or flats between them.

You see, there are no sharps or flats between B and C or between E and F. To remember this you can use a mnemonic to help you;

Big Cats Eat Fast

All of this is much easier to visualise on a piano where the white keys represent the natural notes and the smaller black keys represent the sharps and flats. By memorising the mnemonic, Big Cats Eat Fast you won’t go far wrong on the guitar. All you need to know is that there are no B sharps, no C flats, no E sharps and no F flats.

Another thing you might have noticed is that the notes only run from A to G. After G, the next note is an A but it will be one octave higher than the first A. Using our 5th string, the A string as an example, travelling up the fretboard you will notice that the note produced at the 12th fret is the same as the note produced when playing the open string.

However, although it is the same note, it is one octave higher. That means it’s still an A but it’s pitched higher than our original open A note. The 12th fret of every string on the guitar produces the same note as the open string, but one octave higher.

How The Musical Alphabet Applies To Guitar Chords

There are some chord shapes that can travel up and down the fretboard and be used to make different chords. It works using the same structure as the musical alphabet in as much as the chords change corresponding to the distance up the fretboard they travel.

For instance if you were to play an F barre chord (which is basically an E chord with the 1st fret barred) and slid that whole shape up by one fret, you’d be playing an F#/Gb chord, slide it up to the 3rd fret and you’d be playing a G chord and so on.

Now, the part where there are no sharps and flats between B and C as well as E and F still applies to the chords as well.

That same principle of moving a chord shape up and down the fretboard applies to every chord. However, you do need to be aware of open strings. For instance, playing an open G chord would sound discordant if moved up the fretboard because the open strings will not be raised in the same way as strings 6, 5 & 1.

You can apply this technique to easier versions of chords like the easy F chord as long as you remember not to play any open strings which in the case of the F shape is quite easy because you just don’t play the 6th string.

Another chord that can relatively easily be used up and down the fretboard is the B chord. If you take a close look at the B chord, it’s simply an A chord moved up the fretboard by 2 frets with either a barre across all of the strings on the 2nd fret or just the high E string covered at the 2nd fret and you don’t play the 5th or 6th strings at all.

If you were to slide that shape down by one fret, you would produce a Bb/A# chord. Take it down another fret and your index finger is no longer on the fretboard at all and you’ll be playing an A chord.

However, if you slide that B shape up one fret from its starting position, you’ll be playing a C chord because there are no sharps or flats between B and C. Slide it up one more fret and you’ll be playing a C#/Db chord and so on.

Now that you understand where the notes are positioned on the strings and how you can change a chord simply by moving its position, you’ll be able to play more effectively and move around the fretboard with more confidence.

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