Updated 2024
Estimated time to read: 10 minutes

Understanding the musical alphabet is essential for any aspiring guitarist. Once you learn these notes and their corresponding fretboard positions, you'll gain the ability to play scales and chords, improvise solos, and communicate effectively with other musicians. You'll also enhance your ability to read sheet music and recognize patterns, allowing you to play songs more intuitively.

Sections:

• Introduction to the Musical Alphabet

• The Musical Alphabet on Piano

• Half Steps and Whole Steps

• The Musical Alphabet on Guitar

• What Happens at the 12th Fret?

• Natural Notes

• Altered Notes: Sharp (#), Flat (b), Double-Sharp (x), Double-Flat (bb)

• How to Choose Which Altered Note Name to Use?

• What Do You Call Notes that Have More than One Name?

• The Chromatic Scale: All the Notes

• Wrapping it up

Introduction to the Musical Alphabet

Just like English has an alphabet with letters, there’s also an alphabet for music notes (used in Western music). Luckily we don’t need to memorize 26 letters, just 7 notes! If you are familiar with the English language, then it will be very easy as the musical alphabet is the first 7 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. To make sure we stick to only the first 7, you can remember that there’s no ‘H’ in music.

That’s enough talk about the alphabet, let’s see what it looks like so we can play it.

The Musical Alphabet on Piano

First, we’re going to look at how you can play the musical alphabet on piano. This will help a little with visualizing how the notes are connected and will help anyone transitioning from piano to learning guitar. Since the alphabet starts with A, let’s start there and play all the white keys up to the next A note.

Once we get back to the starting note, we just repeat the pattern.

Seems fairly simple, however when we transition to the guitar fretboard, we’ll need some additional parameters as the frets aren’t color coordinated (black and white) like on a piano. To accomplish this we need to learn about half steps and whole steps.

Half Steps and Whole Steps

Half steps and whole steps can also be called semitones and tones respectively. These are two ways to measure the distance between intervals and very straightforward on guitar.

A half step (or semitone) is the distance of 1 fret on guitar. It’s also the distance of a m2 (minor second) interval. On piano this means there isn’t a key in between the selected notes.

Let’s see what this looks like on piano and guitar by playing B up to C or C down to B. Both notes are a half step away from each other.

Starting on any note and going up or down 1 fret results in moving up or down a half step.

A whole step (or tone) is the distance of 2 frets on guitar. It’s also the distance of a M2 (major second) interval. On piano this means there is 1 key in between the selected notes.

Let’s see what that looks like on piano and guitar playing A up to B or B down to A. Both notes are a whole step away from each other.

Starting on any note and going up or down 2 frets results in moving up or down a whole step, which can also just be referred to as a ‘step’.

We can combine half steps and whole steps, like between A and C shown below. These two notes are 3 frets apart. We’d count the total number of half and whole steps and say these notes are a step and a half apart.

Using these two measurements, the half step and the whole step, we can measure the distance between any two notes on the guitar. This is how intervals are defined, but for the rest of this post we’re just going to stick to using half steps and whole steps. You can see a more detailed explanation with examples in the post A Complete Rundown of the Major Scale Formula.

The Musical Alphabet on Guitar

Ok, now that we know how to count half steps and whole steps, we can go through the musical alphabet on the piano we just looked at and follow along on a guitar fretboard to make sure we’re getting the intervals correct. Since we already know that one of the open strings is A, let’s start on that string.

Need to learn the open strings on your guitar? Read this post: The Easy Way to Learn Open Strings On Your Guitar.

Starting with A, we go up a whole step or 2 frets. This brings us to B on the 2nd fret. Notice how with a whole step, we’re skipping the note that’s between A and B on the piano. On the guitar, we’re skipping the same note, instead of counting the keys, we’re counting the frets.

Next we go up a half step or 1 fret. This brings us to C on the 3rd fret. Notice how there aren’t any notes in between an interval of a half step. We don’t have to skip any notes, so the next note is the note we’re ending with.

Next we go up a whole step or 2 frets. This brings us to D on the 5th fret. As you continue up the fretboard, use the dots on your guitar to help you remember where you’re at. Usually, the dots are on the odd fret numbers 3, 5, 7, 9 and finally two dots are displayed on the 12th fret to indicate that the notes repeat, but we’ll get to that later on in this post. Some guitar fretboards also have a dot on the first fret. It just depends on who made your guitar.

Next we go up a whole step or 2 frets. This brings us to E on the 7th fret.

A quick note here. Remember the open string note names, there are two E’s right? The low E string and the high e string. Since we’re playing on the A string, which is right below the low E string, you can play the E note on the 7th fret of the A string and it sounds exactly the same as the low E string. That is, if your guitar is in tune.

Next we go up a half step or 1 fret. This brings us to F on the 8th fret. Again, remember that when we go up or down a half step, we’re going to the next fret. There aren’t going to be any frets in between the starting note and the ending note.

Next we go up a whole step or 2 frets. This brings us to G on the 10th fret.

Finally, we go up a whole step or 2 frets. This brings us to A on the 12th fret.

We made it! We went from the start of the open string A and followed each of the intervals corresponding with the white keys on the piano all the way up to the 12th fret. The notes on the 12th fret are the same as the open string notes, and this is shown with two dots on the 12th fret. If you keep going up the fretboard, the notes will repeat what we just did but be an octave higher.

In summary, we played A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then repeated the A on the 12th fret.

What Happens at the 12th Fret?

You’ll notice that even though there are only seven note names, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, the notes are repeated in more than one or two places on the fretboard, for example on different strings. Because the notes on the 12th fret are the same as those of the open strings, that means that frets 0 through 12 will be the exact same as 12 through 24 (if you have that many frets). All notes repeat from the 12th fret exactly the same as they do from the open strings, and we’ll see why when we get to the chromatic scale in just a minute.

Natural Notes

The notes we’ve been talking about have all been a single letter with nothing after it (i.e. “G”). These are called natural notes. Natural notes aren’t altered in any way. An easy way to remember is to say the first 7 letters of the English alphabet. Another way is to play all of the white notes on a piano. A B C D E F and G.

Altered Notes: Sharp (#), Flat (b), Double-Sharp (x), Double-Flat (bb)

Alternatively, there are notes that are altered. This means there’s a letter with some sort of symbol after it (i.e. “G#”). In the same way that we can change the note we play by going up a fret or down a fret, we can end up with altered notes by doing the same thing. The difference here is when we would normally go from A to B, which is a whole step or 2 frets away, if we only went up a half step or 1 fret away, what note do we have?

Hmmm, let’s see. The note would be on the A string on the 1st fret. It’s higher than the A note by 1 fret and it’s lower than the B note by 1 fret. This is where altered notes help us out.

There are a few different kings of altered notes that you might see, and some are more frequent than others. Let’s go through them all and see which one applies here.

Sharp: When we raise a note 1 fret, we sharp the note using the pound sign (#). This is the same as going up a half step.

Flat: When we lower a note 1 fret, we flat the note using a lower case “b” (b). This is the same as going down a half step.

Double-Sharp: When we raise a note 2 frets, we sharp the note twice using an “x” (x). This is the same as going up a whole step.

Double-Flat: When we lower a note 2 frets, we flat the note twice using two lower case b’s (bb). This is the same as going down a whole step.

How to Choose Which Altered Note Name to Use?

It all depends on the context.

In our example we’re going from A up 1 fret, we’ll use a sharp to identify the note, and we end up with A#.

Let’s go with another example. Starting from D and going down 1 fret, what note is that? Since we’re lowering the note by 1 fret, we can flat the note giving us Db (D flat).

Remember there are 2 intervals that are naturally half steps. These are the interval from B to C and E to F. When we go up 1 fret from B, it could be B# (B sharp), but there’s already a natural a half step away so we can just say C. The same thing applied to E and F.

What Do You Call Notes that Have More than One Name?

Just like in the last example going from B up 1 fret to C, we can call the note B# or we can call it C. So which one is correct? This depends on the context. If you’re going through the musical alphabet you probably wouldn’t say A B B# D E F G. Where’s the C? Why are there two different B notes? This doesn’t really make sense. Instead we’d say A B C D E F G.

Here’s a little secret. Every note has more than one name *mind explosion sound* and you might hear someone say “C is enharmonically the same as B#.” This just means that they have the same pitch, but are labeled with different note names. In fact, every note can be called a number of different names. Let’s continue using C as our example. Some other names for C include:

• C - the natural note name.

• B# - 1 fret up from B.

• Dbb (D double-flat) - 2 frets below D.

• In theory you could call C an A triple sharp since you’re starting on A and going up 3 frets. You’d never see this, but it’s a valid way to explain the context of the C note.

The Chromatic Scale: All the Notes

What about the notes we skipped as we went up the fretboard through the musical alphabet? You’ve probably figured through the above few sections that these consist of altered notes. They have a # (sharp) or b (flat) attached, and combining the natural notes of the musical alphabet with the altered notes gives us the what’s called the chromatic scale. Instead of 7 notes, the chromatic scale consists of 12 unique notes.

When we play every note on the A string from the open string up to the 12th fret (at every fret), we’re playing the A Chromatic Scale. Let’s write out the notes:

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A

Notice we’re using sharps (#) on the altered notes to show their relationship to the note we’re referencing. We could easily (and correctly) label the notes with flats instead:

A Bb B C Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A

It makes sense right? We’re identifying the alterned notes in relation to the note before or after it. But it would make more sense to use flats going from the 12th fret to open string going down the fretboard:

A Ab G Gb F E Eb D Db C B Bb A

It’s definitely easier to read and come up with the names of the altered notes by stating their relationship to the previous note.

A and then A# is easier than A and then Bb.

But if we’re starting on B and go down the fretboard, saying B and then Bb is easier than saying B and then A#.

Musicians can debate the “correct” way to identify notes (and chords), especially altered ones. Remember there’s a name for every note, but based on the context, it should be easy to recall and shows the relationship to another note.

Wrapping it up

In this post we covered the notes starting with A, however, you can start with any note. Try to use the techniques we explored in this post to play the natural notes of the musical alphabet on each string of your guitar. Feel free to share how it went down in the comments below.

Having a solid understanding of the open string note names, musical alphabet, and how notes are arranged on the guitar will benefit you for the rest of your musical journey. You may have more questions than answers at this point, but that’s part of the learning process.