Reading Guitar Notes
W
hen you are learning to play guitar, one of the things you have to learn is how to read guitar notes. There are three main methods of reading guitar notes. The easiest method is using guitar charts. These tell you what chords to play and where to play them, but do not tell you much about the music itself. The second method is reading guitar tabs. Guitar tabs are great for telling you how to play notes and what fret to play them on, but they do not describe how long to play a note. I’ve described these two methods on other pages, so I won’t go into detail on them here. The last method, that we will focus on here, is what you may be used to seeing with music, the music staff.
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The music for a guitar can be written on a staff. When reading guitar notes this way, you can tell what notes to play, where to play them, how long to play them, and even what the melody of the music is. But to read guitar notes from a staff can be more difficult than other tabs. When used in combination with the tabs or a chord chart, reading guitar notes becomes much easier.
When you are reading guitar notes from a staff, you have to know how a staff is arranged. A music staff has five lines, each representing a note. The lines on a staff depend on what clef sign is in front. For most guitarist, this will be the treble clef, that looks something like a cross between a G and an S. In fact, when only one staff of music is shown, it is usually the treble clef, so this is the one you are probably most familiar with. The lines on the treble clef, starting from the bottom, are E, G, B, D, and F. An easy way to remember this is (E)very (G)ood (B)oy (D)eserves (F)udge. The spaces, from bottom to top, spell FACE. Sometimes you will see lines above or below the staff. Just follow the pattern up or down to figure out what note it is. One note to be particularly familiar with is the first line below the staff in treble clef. This note is known as Middle C. On a standard tuned, acoustic (folk or classical) or electric guitar, this note is the 3rd fret on the A string.
Next to the clef on a staff when you are reading guitar notes is the time signature. A time signature tell you how long to play individual notes that you might see. The bottom number tells you what note gets the beat. Most often, this number will be four. We will look at the different notes in a minute, but this indicates that the quarter note will get the beat. The most common variation on this is 2, which would indicate the half note. The top number will indicate how many notes are in a measure. A measure is just a way to divide the notes so that each note has equal value, and gives a common reference to the piece. The most common is again 4, meaning that there are 4 beats to a measure. So, if the time signature has a top number of 4 and a bottom number of 4, that means the piece has 4 beats to a measure and the quarter note gets the beat. This is the most common time signature, followed closely by 3/4, which is three beats per measure with the quarter note getting the beat.
Next to the time signature when reading guitar notes, you may see a sign that looks like a # or like an italic b. These indicate the key that the piece is to be played in. When you see a note on the line that has the #, you will play in the note a half step up when you see a note on the line or space with a italic b, you play the note a half step down. Sometimes, you will see the b or the # next to the note. you will still play at a half step down for the b or a half step up for the #, but just for that one note, and any others that appear in the same measure. One other symbol you might see looks like a box with a stems pointing up on the upper left corner and down on the lower right corner. This is the natural sign, and you would play any note it appears by without a sharp or flat.
One last common mark you will see when reading guitar notes is two thick bars across all the lines with two dots on either side of the middle line. When the two dots are on the left, that means to go back and repeat what you just played. If you have the two dots on the left of the bars, this is where you would start to repeat from. Otherwise, you repeat from the beginning of the piece. Sometimes you will see a line with a number over it where you have the repeat mark. This means that the first time you go through that section, you play part 1, the second time, you play section 2, and so on. One last repeat thing you might see is DS al Coda (or al Fine). For coda, you play to the coda and for al Fine, you play to the end of the piece.
The list here is by no means an exhaustive list of everything you might find reading guitar notes. But you will find most of the things you will see in the vast majority pieces of music.
