The Note Circle (Guitar Lesson BC-152) Guitar for beginners Stage 5

This is Stage 5, Lesson 2 of Justin's Beginner Guitar Course.

This video explains sharps and flats and tones and semitones.

The Justinguitar Beginners Guitar Course, a series of over 100 lessons on guitar for beginners. Text support is on the web site and also in a proper old skool paper book which can be ordered from the web site of your local music store :)

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

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Hello people!
How are you doing?

It's Justin here!

Are you ready for
a little bit of music theory?

That's not really music theory.

All we're gonna talk about today is

the notes that we use
in western music and

so it's kind of the
beginning of music theory

'cause if you don't know this thing,
you're not going to have any chance of

understanding any music theory ever.

So this is the most basic thing.

It's really practical on the guitar

and you really need to know this stuff.

So, first thing:
it's called the note circle.

And you'll see that it is
very much like a circle,

the way the notes go round
and around and around

over the different octaves,
we're going to get to that in a sec.

Now in order to learn this,

it's really, really, really loads easier
if you can see the note circle.

Now we may well figure a cool way of
putting it up on the screen

like next to me, there or there
or there or something,

but in case we don't,

it would be really good for you
to go to the website.

Actually, it's more useful to
go to the website anyway

and that way you can look at the diagram
for the note circle on the screen.

Ok, so let's assume that you've just
paused and you've gone off

and you're now looking at the note circle.

First thing I want you to notice

is that we have 7 notes
in western music, generally.

And there is an exception
that I will explain in a sec.

But those notes are:
A, B, C, D, E, F and G.

That's it, yeah?

You don't see H or I
or J or K or anything.

However, sometimes if you
happen to be a German

you may well see H sometimes.

Now, I'm not going to
go through what all of that is,

'cause it's just going to
confuse everyone.

So you Germans, you have to go
and ask somebody to explain the H to you,

cause I'm not going to do it here, but I might
put little sidenote on the website actually,

on the webpage,
so you can go and check that out.

But for everyone else, now you only have
A, B, C, D, E, F, G and that's it.

Now this will be the same as
the kind of the white notes on the piano

not that you're playing piano,
this is a guitar lesson

but bear with me for just a second.

But I am sure you're aware that there's
white notes and black notes on the piano

and the black notes are referred to
generally as the sharps (#) and flats (♭).

Now, a sharp means that a regular note
is made one semi tone higher.

So, if we have an A note, let's say,

there's A note at the
5th fret of the 6th string (plays).

That's the note A.

If I want to play A# I move it up
so the note becomes one fret,

which is the same thing as a semi tone,

higher (plays).

And that would be the equivalent of
one step around the note circle.

If you look at the note circle you'll see A

and if you go around clockwise
around there one step,

you'll see that you get to
the note A# (plays).

That was A to A#.

If you went the other way, you went
counter-clockwise or anti-clockwise

around the note circle from A,
you'd get to A♭.

And a flat makes a note go down
in pitch by one semitone or one fret,

a semitone and a fret are the same thing.

So we'd have here (plays) A,
if we go down a semitone (plays),

we get to A♭.

Now, really good way of remembering
the sharp and flat thing

is that if you sit on something sharp,
you would jump up,

so sharp makes you go up

and flat, is a flat tire.

If you get a flat tire on your car
or your bike or whatever

the car will go down.

You often say the tires
gone down, been let down.

So flat goes down, sharp goes up.

Everytime, no matter what you are,
whatever note you're on,

if you're on a C (plays)
and you want to go C# (plays),

it's gone up.

Now you could go (plays)
down one from C

and that would be C♭.

But that would also be another note.

This is where it gets a little bit confusing.

So if you look around
the note circle now,

you'll notice that it doesn't always have
a sharp and a flat between every note.

In fact B and C, there's no note between.

There's no such thing as a B# or a C♭,

or there is, but I'm going to
come back to it in a sec,

and E and F, there's no
semitone between those at all.

So as you're counting around
you'll see that it goes:

A right at the top,
then the next one

it goes to A# / B♭.

Hmm, what's that? A# and B♭ are
actually exactly the same thing.

So you can see that
if you went up from A,

you went A and then you went one step
clockwise around the note circle

you'd get to A#.

If you go to the next note,
you'd get to B.

And if you go backwards from B
one note, you get to B♭.

So therefore A# and B♭
are exactly the same note.

And if you really want to impress
your mates or your school teacher,

you can call these things
an enharmonic equivalent,

which means two notes
that have different names,

but sound the same.
Enharmonic equivalent.

Big word, definitely will get you extra
points in your music theory essay.

Anyway, so as you're looking
around the note circle,

you need to know a couple of things.

First of all, semitone and tone.

And a semitone is one step
around the note circle.

And that could be from A to A#,

or B♭ to B,
or B to C.

It's only a semitone, as long as it's one step
around the note circle, it's a semitone.

And a semitone, is the same as
the equivalent to one fret on the guitar,

so each one going, up one fret,
up one fret is one semitone.

Another thing that you really need to
know about is a thing called a tone.

And a tone is the same as two semitones.

So if you go two steps around the note circle

you would get, be moving a tone,
and that could be,

say from A to B,
that would be a tone

'cause you've gone:
A, A#, B

or you could go from E to F#

'cause you'd go E, F, F#.

So E to F# would be a tone.

Now if you want to get more into this

I kind of don't like doing this,

but I've got a
Practical Music Theory download pack

that you can get, which
and this is the very start of that

and that takes you through like
the idea of the note circle,

how to use the tones and semitones
to make up the major scale

and where chords come from

and how the chords go together

with the scale to form a key
and all of that sort of stuff.

So if you want to get into that
from about now

it will be ok for you to start your
little journey learning some music theory

And it is really, really rewarding.

Now I'm going to talk
a little bit in a future lesson

about using these tones and semitones,

the knowledge of tones and semitones

and the knowledge of the note circle

in order to find different
notes on the guitar neck

which is a really, really useful thing.

But the one thing you
might want to try,

just yourself now,
just as a little exercise,

is counting up and down the strings

Now you already know
that the thinnest string

is the note E (plays).

So if we went up one fret from there (plays),

we'd be on to the note F.

Because that's the next note
around on the note circle

and the next one step up (plays),

would be the note F# or G♭.

One more note (plays)
would be G

one note higher than that,
would be G# or A♭,

that's the same note of course,

up one more (plays)
and you are at A.

And so on, you can count up
all of the strings

So, it's a good way of just kind of

counting through your note,
the letters, in the note circle

It's really really important,

it's very basic kind of theory, if you like,

But its really kind of
just musical knowledge

that is pretty essential if you're
going to progress on the instrument.

We're going to be using this
quite a few different ways,

even before the end of this course,

so it's not just for advanced stuff.

So I hope your brain has't exploded,

and you feel ok with this.

It is fairly straightforward information this.

If you're finding it a bit confusing,

just read through it a few times

make sure that you've got
your understanding proper

about your tones and semitones

and I'll see you for
another lesson very soon.

Take care, dudes.
Bye, bye!