Chords for Guitar note names - learn the names of the notes on a guitar in 4 easy steps

[E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Four easy steps to memorise the note names on a guitar.
Before starting on the four steps, you need to know the absolute basics of note naming.
The notes are named from A to G and these note names are simply repeated where necessary.
For example, A B C D E F G, A B C D E F G etc.
The first slight complication that needs to be remembered is that the gaps between the
notes aren't all uniform.
The B and C and the E and F are closer than all the other
notes.
Or, to put it another way, what's actually going on is there's a tone gap between each
of the notes except B and C where there's a semitone and E and F where there's another
semitone.
So, looking at this on the neck of a guitar, you can see there's a gap between
A and B, C and D, D and E, F and G and G and A.
This is a universal musical pattern and it can be seen most clearly on a keyboard or
a piano.
The familiar pattern on any piano or keyboard of black and white keys arises
as a direct result of the distribution of the notes.
Notice on the keyboard how the
E and the F and the B and the C don't have a black note between them, whereas all the
other notes that have an extra semitone between them have a black note.
So, to simplify all
this, you need to remember the notes E and F and B and C are always right next to each
other.
There's no empty fret between them.
Step one in learning the names of the notes on a guitar is to learn the names of the open
strings.
The name of the open strings going from thickest to thinnest are B, [A] A, [D] D, [Em] G,
B and E.
And you can remember these by using a simple saying.
Here are three.
Every angry
dog growls and bites eventually.
Or, Eddie ate dynamite.
Good bye, Eddie.
Or, Elephants
and dogs.
God blesses everything.
_ When memorising the names of the open strings, you're also
memorising the names of the notes on the twelfth fret.
This is why many guitars have a double
dot or an accented marker on the twelfth fret because it's an octave above the open strings.
I'll explain octaves later in this tutorial.
The next step is to memorise the name of the notes on the bottom E string.
Even if you
don't want to learn to read music or don't want to study theory, it's important that
you know the names of these notes.
E-shaped bar chords and many of the scales get their
names from the bottom E string.
By learning the names of the notes on the bottom E string,
[Abm] you're also learning the name of the notes on the top E string.
So now you've mastered
the names on two strings of your guitar.
The next step is to memorise the name of the notes on the A string.
This is the last string
you need to memorise the name of the notes on, but it's also an important one for other
reasons other than reading music and theory.
Once you've memorised the names of the open strings and the names of the notes on the
E string and the A string, you know half of the notes on the guitar and the rest can be
worked out using octaves. _
An octave is the name given to the gap, or the interval, between
two notes with the same name.
So you can have an octave up or an octave down.
An octave
occurs then anywhere the note repeats itself, for example from A to [A] A.
It's also common
to refer to multiple octaves, [B] for example if the A repeats twice, then you have a two
[A] octave gap or interval.
_ _ If you prefer to think about this in a technical or scientific way, the octave is the point
at which the frequency doubles or halves.
So if you were to take a fixed note or frequency
as a [F] reference note, an octave up from this would be double the frequency, and an octave
down from this would be half the frequency.
And every time you doubled or halved the frequency
from the new points, it would be up or down another octave respectively.
From what you've learnt already, that is the open strings, the E string and the A string
notes, we can find all these other notes using octaves.
And to do this, all you need to do
is remember a pattern, [G] that is 2-2, or 2 strings up, 2 frets up.
What this means in practical
terms is, if you take any of the notes you've learnt so far, and then go 2 strings up, 2
frets up, from that point the note repeats an octave up.
For example here, the G, which
is the 3rd fret on the bottom E string, repeats an octave up, which is the 5th fret on the
D string.
And this rule is true of any of the notes on the bottom E string, 2 strings
up, 2 frets up, will always produce the octave up.
And when this is applied, it means now
you know nearly all the notes on the D string, without having to memorise them.
And because
this rule applies to the A string, you know nearly all the notes on the G string.
The pattern doesn't have to stop here however, we can take it up another octave, to learn
the names of most of the notes on the B string.
To do this, we have to learn a second pattern,
which goes from our 2nd octave, which is 2 strings up, 3 frets up.
So for example, from
our original G, in the 3rd fret of the bottom E string, we found one G an octave up, in
the 5th fret of the D string, and a second G, 2 [Em] octaves up, [G] on the 8th fret of the B
string.
This pattern also works from the A string, so you can use it to confirm any of
the notes on the top E string that you're not 100% sure of.
To summarise then, the 4 steps are, Step 1, learn the names of the open strings.
Step
2, learn the names of the notes on the bottom E string.
Step 3, learn the names of the notes
on the A string.
And Step 4, learn the octave patterns. _
By following these 4 steps, you'll
know all these notes, and more. _ _