Transcript for:
Guitar Basics and Tuning

hi folks hope you're enjoying and benefiting from our guitar lesson series remember it's essential that you watch these lesson videos in order each lesson leads into the next and you won't get the big picture if you skip any of the steps many of you have been searching for these answers for years you might be tempted to jump ahead and look at lesson 24 because you're into the blues but if you don't know your intervals and modes from Lesson 12 and 17 you just ain't gonna get it consider purchasing the 150 page official course handbook for 19.95 from our website at www.absolutely understandguitar.com you'll find that link multiple places here on our YouTube channel each of the 32 video lessons has a corresponding printable page that you can view to help with review and memorization all of the charts and graphs I create in the videos are reprinted there the package also includes our remain amazing cord scale in arpeggio encyclopedia containing most every useful finger pattern known to man reserve your copy today if you like what you're learning here tell all your friends and like And subscribe to our channel so enjoy this lesson and continue on and you will absolutely understand guitar [Music] hi welcome back to absolutely understand guitar I'm Scotty West well congratulations you already know most all there is to know about music now how does your guitar actually work how do you hold it what do your fingers do where do you find those 12 notes that make up all music it's really quite simple this is lesson three so make sure your booklet is open to page three all set here we go here's your musical alphabet here we learned this last week and you got to memorize that make sure if you haven't done that yet that you've got that memorized what are the words sharp and flat mean um a sharp is the same as B flat two different names for the same note pretty soon I'll tell you when you call it one and when you call the other for for right now it doesn't matter just when you think you've got that down you have to memorize that there's two places in the musical alphabet where there no are no Sharps and flats between the notes b and c and e and f and there's your musical alphabet right there every single song in every single style of music that you've ever heard in your life is just a reshuffling of those 12 units right there and not very many people understand that at all but where are those notes on your guitar how does your guitar actually work and and let's start talking about that now you are probably aware that the six strings of your guitar have alphabetic letter designations right some people don't know that but it seems most people have come across that concept before your six strings of your guitar have Alphabet letter names those strings go and we're going to go from low to High by the way the thicker lower pitch note up to the high one a lot of times interestingly enough the strings are labeled and numbered in the opposite direction I will never understand that if you think about your guitar from your high E string going down to your low string you will never understand how it works and that's the order that they're numbered in isn't that weird we're going to start with our low string down here we're going to work our way up to the high string they go like this in in the order of the the alphabet names of your strings go as as many of you already know e a g g b and e that's e a d g b e I'm gonna write them on this chart here the names of your strings go e a d G B and E now at some point during everyone's guitar playing career somebody manages to convince them that they should memorize this set of alphabet letters but nobody ever seems to get to the point where they actually understand what the heck that has to do with anything my first question is this do you think these letters here e a d g b e have anything to do with these letters up here in the musical alphabet well the answer is yes they do but a lot of people when I ask them that question they go no I don't think they do and I go well why not and they point out some very lucid things they go for example these the musical alphabet is in alphabetical order and these aren't e-a-d-g-b-e that's not alphabetical order and this up here has all this sharp and flat stuff going on and I don't see any Sharps and flats down here so how could these alphabet letters have anything to do with these up here and I go well actually they do and the first thing you would want to understand is see this e-a-d-g-b-e those are in alphabetical order people go what are you nuts e-a-d-g-b-e that's not alphabetical order I go the only reason they don't appear to be in alphabetical order is there's other notes in between here that we're not seeing these are just selected notes out of an alphabetical Arrangement so it kind of works like this e f g a b c d e f g a b c d e not only that all the sharps and flats are down there too it's just that none of the open strings of the guitar happen to be tuned to Sharp and flat notes now show you what I mean we know that music is a is a language that has an alphabet that has 12 units in it when we look at a piano keyboard up here it's very easy for us to see the linearity of Music we we see that the keys of the piano certainly are in alphabetical order and you got this sharp and flat stuff that you're gonna have to get used to but no problem with the concept that the piano is in alphabetical order a question that people ask me all the time is does the guitar have the same kind of linearity that the that the piano does and the answer is yes it does but it's not just quite so self-evident you would have to have somebody show you the linearity of the guitar otherwise you'll never really basically understand it and so few people ever get this explained to them the right way um if what I suggested last week is that really in the end the keyboard does pretty much the same thing that the guitar does then for example let's listen to the open strings of the guitar and I'll show you that I can play those exact same notes on the piano now here's what again what the open strings of your guitar sound like going from low to high e a d g b and e e a d g b e I can play those exact same notes on the piano wouldn't you agree here they are [Music] a d G b e didn't that sound exactly like when I played the strings of the guitar now you'll notice I've actually labeled these Keys up here e a d g b e remember those actually are in alphabetical order we know that the keyboard is in alphabetical order so now we can see that here's e and f and g and so there's a b c d e f g a b c d e they're in alphabetical order too it's just that there's certain notes in between there in in the musical alphabet that the open strings are not tuned to and an interesting thing is look how many notes there are in between each of the open strings of the guitar for example here's E and A how many notes are there in between E and A there are one two three four there's four notes in between E and A if we look down here at the musical alphabet we can see that's true too here's e and here's a how many notes are in between f f sharp g flat G and G sharp a flat there are four notes in between E and A now look at the next two here's a and d the open next two strings of the guitar Were A and D look how many notes are in between one two three four there are four our notes in between A and D in the musical alphabet a sharp B flat B C C sharp d flat now look at the next two strings of your guitar D and G how ts are there in between D and G one two three four it's beginning to look like when they created the guitar and they wanted you to be able to play all of these 12 notes here they decided that they would tune the strings so that there would always be four notes in between each open string of the guitar why do you suppose they did that why did they tune the guitar so that there would always be four notes in between each open string any of any any idea none of my students ever get this when I ask them to them you know what the answer is why did they tune your guitar so that each string each two strings have four notes in between the answer is because the guitar after all was designed by and for human beings who have four fingers on their hands and an opposable thumb the guitar is tuned the way it is because you have four fingers I'll show you what I mean now if you want to play the 12 note system on the guitar which is what you want to do that's all it's there for there's a couple of different ways that you can do that one way that you can play all 12 notes on the guitar is to start on any given string on the open string down here at the bottom and then simply begin with your fingers to work your way up the neck fret by fret like this one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve until I get to this fret up here this is probably the only fret on the neck of your guitar that has two dots on it you'll know these you see these dots here they're really just a visual aid to tell you remind you which fret you're on some manufacturers include a second set of double dots at the seventh fret but the overwhelming number of guitar manufacturers only have one fret where there's two dots on that fret that is your 12th fret if you count up the neck you will find that those double dots are on your 12th fret that is actually if you think about it the 13th note that you can play on that string because you your open string itself was actually the first note that you can play on that string so your first fret is actually your second note so 13 notes one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen thirteen notes actually takes you to your 12th fret here's a question for you if the name of your open string your low open string is e and and that's a note out of the musical alphabet what do you suppose the name of this note is on your 12th fret the 13th note above e it's e again right because wouldn't that be an octave we've gone through our entire musical alphabet and we've come back to e again e f remember there's no sharp and flat between e and f e f f sharp g flat G G sharp a flat a a sharp B flat B C no sharp and flat between B and C right C sharp d flat D D sharp E flat 13th note on the 12th fret the double dotted fret is e you've played one octave just by walking up that one string right there but we don't have to stop there notice there's more Frets above there and we could even keep on going oops where am I one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven I run out of Frets but that doesn't even have to stop me I can keep going 12 13. so even if your guitar only had one string on it the low E string you could still play every single note that the guitar is capable of playing right on that one string but think about what a clumsy and crazy instrument that would be you'd be running back and forth with your fingers on one string you'd be up here making these tiny little movements with your fingers like millimeters apart what a totally impractical instrument that would be but nonetheless it could be done you can play all of your 12 notes for an infinite number of octaves on any string well at some point in time humans began to think about building multi-string instruments so that they could begin to play multiple notes at the same time chords and Harmony and stuff like that well think of it this way as soon as you start contemplating building yourself a multi-string instrument you owe it to yourself to come up with some kind of logical strategy for tuning the strings so that they have some kind of relationship to one another I mean I could just take these things and go boing bong bing bing bing and just put them anywhere but then how would I ever have any systemization how would I ever have any standardized control over these 12 notes right there well you know they're going geez we better tune this instrument so that it makes some kind of sense geez what should we do well one day somebody got this cool idea they went you know we can play all 12 notes just on one string like this but that's kind of clumsy and awkward to keep having to jump your hands around on the neck like this since we're going to have this multi-string instrument I got an idea why don't we do this we'll start down here at the bottom of the string and we'll go and we'll just play up the four notes that we can play with our our four fingers and just when we run out of fingers the very next note on the very next fret that we would like to be able to hear that's the note that will tune the second string to will tune the next string to that note that's on the fifth fret on this first string down here and listen to this if I put my finger here on the fifth fret on my low E string now listen to my next open string you hear that that's the same note [Music] so how do you like that the whole reason they did that was because just when you run out of fingers with your four fingers all you have to do is change to the next string listen to this one more time as I go up the neck on one string and play an octave now that's the kind of clumsy and awkward way to do it now come back down here to the bottom of the neck and listen doesn't this sound exactly the same [Music] they decided to tune the strings of the guitar four notes apart because you have four fingers and to play your way through the 12 note system you just go up until you run out of fingers and then you switch to the next string [Music] and doing that on the guitar is exactly the same as doing this on the piano you're just playing your way through the 12 notes in a sequence didn't that sound exactly like this [Music] oops I'm not used to thinking about it that way so that's why the guitar is tuned the way it is it's tuned so that the strings are four notes apart because humans have four fingers on them to play your way through all of those 12 notes is a pitch pattern it's a particular type of scale called a chromatic scale yeah I don't know if you've ever heard that before that's what a chromatic scale is when you play through all the 12 notes [Music] now there's another there's another way for us to prove that that's what's going on on the neck of the guitar we noticed by labeling the keys up here that that there's four notes in between each string another way for us to prove that is you know your musical alphabet here let's take a look at that that's what all these hieroglyphics I have down here at the bottom are for example you know that the low string on your guitar is tuned to e which is this note right down here so let me ask you this when you put your index finger on the first fret on the low E string down here so I'm playing my open string like this and then I put my index finger on the first fret right there what's the name of that note it would be the note in the musical alphabet that is the very next note higher than e what's that have you got your alphabet memorized is it e sharp no it's not remember there's no sharp and flat between E and F the note on the first fret on your low E string IS F e is the open string your first fret is f now what when I put my second finger down on the second fret right there what then would be the name of that note it would be the next note higher than F in the musical alphabet what's that hopefully you know that would be F sharp or g flat and then I put my third finger down on the next fret after that what note would that be that would be the next note higher which you should know is G right finally on that string I put my pinky down on that fret on the next fret there that would be the next note higher than G what's that it's G sharp a flat now that was my pinky note right I just ran out of fingers on that string e f f sharp G G sharp what is the name of the very next note higher than G sharp G sharp a flat the very next note higher than that is a isn't it you're beginning your cycle back over again well that's why your next guitar string is tuned to open a because it you once you run out of fingers on your low E string it's just time to switch to your next string which is a and of course these notes down here are just the four notes that you just played with your four fingers right like that and just when you ran out of fingers it was time to go on to a your open a string now what if you play your first fret on your a string what would the name of that note be it be the next note higher than a that's a sharp B flat and then you put your second finger down that would be B and then you put your third finger down that would be the next note higher than b what's that what's the next note higher than b no sharp and flat between B and C is there so that would be C and finally on that string you put your pinky down on that string and what would the name of that note be the next note higher than C is of course C sharp or d flat once again here's the notes you just played with your four fingers remember you've got a chart just like this in your support material too if this is coming at you a little fast you can just you know check that out as you're going by now my pinky note on my a string was C sharp d flat what's the next note after that in the musical alphabet it's D right that's why your next string is tuned to D it picks up right there with d and there has been four notes in between these two strings so the strings so far right that's because you have four fingers on your D string your first fret with your first index finger on that would be D sharp or E flat and then your second finger on that string would play e now take a look at this you started on E down here our low open string was an e right and now we've encountered another E on the second fret on our D string over here would notice we're also about halfway across the neck at this point and we've hit another e well we've gone one octave and if you count the number of notes we've played at this point it's 13 notes one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen thirteen notes we played and we have gone one octave and we're about halfway across the neck at this point you'll also notice that your high string up here on the guitar is also tuned to an E your low string is an e and your high string is an e up here are those the same pitch are those two your low E down here at the bottom and your high e up at the top are those the same pitch no of course not listen to them [Music] this High e is much higher in Pitch than this low e e is a lot of people think they're only one octave apart you're about to find out that actually they're two octaves apart it's one octave gets us to about the middle of the neck here and it's going to be another octave to get us up the the high E string so we are on the second fret on our D string and that's an E note let's keep going the third fret on your D string would be the next note higher than e that's F and then your pinky note would be F sharp g flat once again there's the four notes you just played with your four fingers just when you run out of fingers what's the very next note after F sharp g flat it's G right that's why your next string is tuned to G your open next string is G it picks up right where you left off on your D string now here's where things get a little bit interesting we have noticed that all the strings of the guitar are tuned four notes apart because you have four fingers right well what you're about to find out now is very important there are two strings on the guitar that are not tuned to the same distance apart that all the other ones are and it's these two strings right here your next two strings your G string and your B string are not tuned four notes apart they're only tuned three notes apart these strings are tuned one note closer together than any of the other strings on the guitar are and everybody goes why did they decide to do that they had this nice logical four fingers four notes apart type thing going on why did they decide to mess with that and and mess us all up well the answer is a very interesting thing that we're just going to touch on once for right now and we'll be talking about this more later on um a guitar is what's known as a polyphonic instrument polyphonic means many noted polyphonic instruments are the types of instruments that you can play multiple notes simultaneously on you can play chords on a guitar is a polyphonic instrument a piano is a polyphonic instrument you can play chords on these instruments a saxophone or a trumpet these are monophonic instruments they will only play one note at a time you can't play notes on a trumpet I mean you can't play chords on a trumpet right you knew that you can only play one note at a time one thing that you've got to keep in the back of your mind about all polyphonic instruments is this and you might not this might never have occurred to you before you cannot assume that every single combination of notes that you might ever want to play on a polyphonic instrument is something that's actually going to be physically possible for you to accomplish there are profound physical limitations as to what combinations of notes you can play on any polyphonic instrument and that surprises a lot of people they go gee really I thought they would have designed these instruments so that you can play any combination of notes you want and I go well wouldn't that be nice but the truth of the matter is here it is the year 2001 and then nobody's come up with a way to do that yet these instruments that we play in these days are generally considered to be the best ones but remember they have profound physical limitations as to what combinations of notes you can play people go really yeah I'll show you I'll give you a trivial example it's easier to see this on the piano again piano is a polyphonic instrument isn't it I ought to be able to play three simultaneous notes on a piano right well I can if they're these three notes or even these three notes or even these three notes but what if they want me to play this note this note and this note all at the same time this note one in the middle of the keyboard and then the one up at the top of the keyboard how am I supposed to do that all at the same time my fingers I can't do that my fingers won't won't reach like that um that's a trivial example you're going to find so many times when you're trying to play a chord on the guitar and you wish you could just move that pinky over one more string and one more fret like that and that'd be such a cool chord and you just can't do it there are physical limitations as to what combinations of notes you can make your fingers play on any polyphonic instrument how do you like that so back to our question here remember our actual question is um uh why when they tuned all the other strings four notes apart why did they decide to tune these strings only three notes apart well the answer is somebody figured out one day a couple of hundred years ago that if they made that one little compromise in the way the instrument was tuned all of a sudden a whole lot of very useful finger patterns particularly in the area of chords a whole lot of finger patterns that had previously been impossible to do suddenly became possible and they just decided to go with that you know it would I suppose would have been nice if all the strings could have been four notes apart but it just made the a more limited instrument somebody said hey let's do that and you can play a lot more chords and and that's the way the guitar the standard tuning of the guitar has been that way ever since uh now let's prove that too because you're going to see alphabetically speaking that there are only three musical alphabet notes in between G and B the first fret on your G string of course would be G sharp or a flat and then your second finger would play a and then your third finger would play a sharp B flat and notice how that's only three notes that's only three notes before the next note you'd want to see is B where your next string picks up now when we get up to the distance between our B string and our E string we are back to four notes again in between each string the first fret on your B string remember there's no sharp and flat between B and C so when you put your index finger on your B string that's a C note by the way you also you uh also have a finger chart that came with your support material of all where all the notes are on your guitar I probably should have mentioned this before but you might want to be looking at that too I actually have that on this next sheet here and we're going to be looking at that in a moment anyway but notice if you look at your finger chart you look at your open B string you'll see the first fret is C and then you put your second finger down and that would be C sharp d flat and then you put your third finger down and that's D and then you put your pinky down and that's D sharp E flat once again there's the four notes you just played with your four fingers just when you run out of fingers at D sharp E flat what's the next note you're looking for that's why your high string is tuned to E now remember this way back here at the bottom of the neck we started on E and we encountered another E about halfway across the neck that was one octave that was 13 notes that got us up to there now if you count you'll find out we've gone another 13 notes and that's gotten us to our open high E string so that's actually two octaves away I can fool people all the time so many people who claim to play the guitar don't know the first thing about it you're going to be stunned now that you're beginning to figure out how it works and how little the people around you actually know about the instrument that they claim to play I Can Go your low string is e your high string is e are they the same note and people go yeah and I go no listen to them the second one is much higher than the first one right and they go oh okay they're an octave apart then and I go no no if you really understand your instrument you'll find that your low string in your high e and your low E are two octaves apart not just one octave apart and you know on the piano that's like two octaves like that listen to them on the guitar foreign two octaves apart that's if you really understand your instrument so a very important fact to understand about the guitar is from your low E string to your high E string is 25 notes out of our musical alphabet it's two octaves but we're not still quite done yet that just took us up to our open high E string we can continue to play four more additional Frets up on our high E string what were the names of those notes be well if your open string is e your first fret would be f and your second fret would be F sharp g flat and then your third fret would be G and then your pinky would play G sharp a flat that's four more notes played with your four fingers four notes is about a third of an octave if there's 12 notes in an octave four more notes is like a third of an octave right so that's one-third octave up here on your high E string a very important fact to know about the guitar is with your four fingers on your first four Frets of your instrument taking all six strings into account you can play 29 notes that is somewhere in the vicinity of two and one-third octaves worth of notes without even moving your hand not very many people understand their instrument on that level at all um and that is the basic skill that you have to develop in order to play the guitar is getting good at moving those four fingers on four consecutive Frets like that and we're going to be talking about that specific exercise and how to work on practicing that in just a couple of minutes that by the way is as we mentioned before is a scale called a chromatic scale when you play through all 12 notes that's what's called a chromatic scale and we're going to show you how to do that in just a moment but one other question I'd like to quickly answer is another question I get all the time is okay I can play two and one third octa's worth of notes without even moving my hand but I have all these other Frets on the neck of the guitar too what is the total range of notes that you can play on the guitar from the lowest note that the guitar will play which of course is your open low E string down here up to the highest note that the guitar will play which is your highest fret on your high E string that would be the total range of notes from your open low E string up to your high fret on your high E string how far apart and Pitch are those two notes well here it is I'll show you it's one octave two octaves we already knew that I'm up on my high E string right that's two octaves but then I can go a third octave [Music] here's where I have to start to go up the neck and then finally I can go a fourth octave [Music] actually I'm a couple of notes short of four octaves on my guitar different manufacturers have different numbers of Frets this is a 22 fret guitar some manufacturers include a couple more the Frets so that you can actually get up to the the total of four octaves most manufacturers don't though um but I always say if you wanted to understand what the total range of the guitar is in terms of the pitch that you can play on it it is the total range of the guitar is about four octaves it's about four octaves and it acoustic guitars sometimes have a couple of less Frets than um than electric guitars have so you can even play a couple of notes probably less than I can but it's somewhere around four octaves and that surprises people sometimes they go four octaves that's it you know people know that there's 88 keys on a piano which is around seven octaves they go you mean the guitar plays a lot fewer notes than a piano does and the answer is yes that that's true it does but I can tell you as a piano player as well that I spend most of my time playing on the piano in that middle range of four octaves that the guitar plays in so you know you don't want to think of the guitar as a horribly limited instrument it's a very nice little polyphonic portable instrument that you can pick up and carry around it's a wonderful instrument but don't ever forget it has limitations uh it only has a certain range of notes it plays and there are only certain combinations of notes that you can actually make your fingers reach within that people go well gee well what do you do then and the answer is well you just you learn what the instrument does well and you make the most of that and then you learn what it won't do when you try to find some way around it which you usually can if you understand your instrument which so few people do so that's basically what's going on with the guitar it is tuned the way it is because you have four fingers so if I had to suggest what might be the single most important fact about understanding the guitar as a physical instrument physical object it's this four fingers equals four frets and what it is to be in control of the entire instrument is basically nothing more than just to be in control of those four Frets but then you've got to ask yourself are you in control or not are you in control of those four Frets or not are you in control or not well if you ask me there's an easy way to tell and this is where we're going to start to see what the what I might suggest is the proper way to hold the guitar is all about um in order to claim that you're controlling the guitar the best way you've got to control those four Frets and the best way that you can prove to yourself that you're in control of all four Frets is this be able to touch all four Frets at once be able to touch all four at once if you can do that you can do anything that's the main physical skill now I'm going to show you something um most people hold the guitar completely wrong um and and they come into my studio and they're sitting there holding the guitar and you're looking at me right now going that's the way I see everybody else holding the guitar and I go to touch all four Frets and they go okay and they wind up in this weird position like this with their shoulders all bent over and everything like that and they go this can't possibly be how they want me to hold the guitar and I go that's right actually you know find it kind of a funny way we've kind of forgotten how to play the guitar over the last few decades people don't understand it it's all about touching all four Frets at the same time look I'm in this weird position with my shoulders at this weird angle my elbows tucked up here in my body I have this extreme curvature in my wrist people go this can't be how I'm supposed to play the guitar and I go actually it's not interestingly enough notice how I have the guitar on my right leg over here at this point well consider this I'll show you maybe a little bit better way to think about holding the car you can hold it this way if you want but you're going to find that there are some problems that way when you're in your band in the end you're probably not going to be sitting down anyway right you're going to be standing up with a guitar strap on playing well when was the last time you saw anybody standing up kind of holding the guitar like this bent way over like this now I'm going to sit back down again but pretend I'm still standing I'm standing up okay now what you notice is when you weigh where a guitar strap is that it pulls the guitar over into the middle of your body like this this strap goes up over the shoulder like this so the middle of the guitar body is in the middle of your body and the head is kind of up like this up towards your head and then you go touch all four Frets oh that's easy look at this look at how my shoulders and my elbow have plenty of room to move around now the funny thing is and you know I I got some curve in my wrist but it's not as bad my elbow here has plenty of room to move around now the funny thing is look what happens when I'm sitting down with the guitar in this position actually the guitar winds up over here on my left knee instead of on the right knee pointed down like this the way everybody else is trying to play it I'm going to suggest that you'll be much better off putting the guitar on your left knee and you kind of get your knees apart so the guitar will sit comfortably right in the middle of your body and look at look at how much easier this looks right here doesn't that look good person sitting there playing the guitar like this looks like they've been playing the guitar for 20 years everybody else looks like an amateur you're kind of going wait a minute I see everybody else sitting this way and I go remember I said most people who claim to play the guitar don't even know the first darn thing about it it's really funny other people are going to go oh that's the way I see all the classical guitar sitting I don't want to look like a nerdy classical guitarist I go hey but those guys get more out of the instrument than anybody they understand four fingers equals four Frets and if you can have access instant access in a comfortable way to those four Frets anytime that's basically all there is to playing the instrument right there so my advice is put the guitar on your left leg you're going to see this information is all in your support material too I'm really hurrying through this I know because I still got a ton of stuff to tell you in the last few minutes here um but it you've got to have instant access with your four fingers to your your four Frets on any string like that and you can now the first exercise I'm going to give you is not going to be the most fun and rewarding thing but I swear this is the most important exercise anyone's ever going to give you on the guitar it's called a chromatic scale exercise there's that word again how do you play all 12 notes what's that called it's called a chromatic scale how do you play a chromatic scale on the guitar well as you know you start with your low E string down here now that you're sitting in the right position touch all four Frets to remind yourself of what position you're supposed to be in you'll notice at that point your thumb is kind of back behind the neck you know it's not up along the side of the neck the way a lot of people try to play if you touch all four Frets before you do anything be able to touch all four at once that'll kind of show you the position you're supposed to be in start with your open low E string and start walking up index fingers second finger third finger pinky then switch to the next string and then walk up that string when you get to your G string you just want to go up three Frets and then to your open B string until you all get all the way up to your pinky note on your high string 29 notes now remember since those two strings right there are tuned one note closer together if I went up to my pinky note on my G string I would simply be repeating the same note that my open B string is tuned to so that's not a critical mistake if you wind up doing that but if you're listening carefully I would be repeating the same note twice if I played my pinky note on my G string so the best thing to do for right now is just to go up to your third finger and then switch to your open B string walk up that string switch to your high e and go all the way up to the top [Music] oh that's basically all there is to playing the guitar but now you've also got to be able to come down to in reverse order now you start on your pinky note on your high string and walk down the Frets until you get to your open string now the open string is the last note that you play on each string uh pinky third finger second finger first finger and then the index I mean index finger and then the open string on that string then you go immediately to the fourth fret on your next lower string and walk down that string down and then open string is the last note you play on that string then you go to your third fret on the previous string second fret first fret open string then switch to your next lower string pinky what I'm doing is I'm typing my alphabet on my typewriter if you can do that you can do anything all there is to playing the guitar [Music] if you can do that you can do anything you've typed your way through the alphabet for a distance of about two and one-third octaves now one thing I also want to mention very quickly is what's going on with this hand we haven't really talked much about what you do with your picking hand with your right hand now most people just intuitively kind of hold the pick the right way there's a lot of different styles the way people hold the picks there's also finger style playing where you use uh you grow your nails a little bit longer and you use each of your individual fingers as a pick but right now we're just going to talk about pick playing plectrum playing and you know you've got your pick there one of the main things that you've got to develop right away and not get in any bad habits about this is so important is you've got to develop what's called alternate picking that is most people that come in to take lessons from me they just start picking in a downward Direction with their pick they don't use any upstrokes every now and then I get some odd person that comes in and their natural inclination is to pick with all upstrokes but if you ever want any speed and so many players these days play really fast the only way you're ever going to get any speed is by utilizing the pick in both directions very regularly down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up and so that's what's called alternate picking and you want to work on this right in the beginning and most of what it is to play the guitar is to is to learn to coordinate this activity down up down up down up down up with your pick with this activity up here with your fingers uh there is one more thing you've got to keep in mind and that is yes four fingers equals four Frets but when you think about it when I was playing that chromatic scale on the guitar just then how many notes was I actually playing on each string was the answer for no actually the answer was five because remember I was playing the open string as well on each string I was playing the open string and then the four notes I was playing with my fingers so the truth of the matter is what it really requires to control the guitar is the control of five Frets the four Frets you play with your four fingers and then the open string itself so interestingly enough it really requires five Frets to control the guitar remember don't think of your open string as some different kind of thing the open strings on the guitar are really no different than the notes that you play your with your fingers on the fretboard it's just kind of like there's another fret down here and there's an invisible magic finger playing that note for you all the time it's a note that the guitar plays for you you don't have to do it with a finger but it's still a note just like any other note so it really requires five notes on each string to control the 12 note pitch system on the guitar when you are playing down at the bottom of the neck you have the luxury of using the open string down there as that fifth note however the last thing we've got to talk about today is why did they give you all these other threats you want to learn how to play all over the neck of the guitar as well you don't want to just play down there in those first four Frets they wouldn't have given you all these other Frets up here now and so this is we'll have to look at this quickly here um further up the neck of the guitar if you want to learn to play the 12 note system anywhere on the neck of the guitar further up the neck of the guitar a new rule kind of has to kick in further up the neck you can't use the open strings anymore if you're playing way up in here the open strings down here don't have any essentially any relevance to what you're doing up here so further up the neck four fingers has to somehow equal five frets you don't have the luxury anymore of um using the open strings so somehow you've got to get your four fingers to play five different notes and in order to do that you learn essentially the only other thing there is to know about the fingering on the guitar for now anyway it's a little thing called finger shifts and the way these work is one of your fingers has to do double duty one of your fingers has to play two notes one finger plays two notes and there are certain more and less and prescribed ways to think about doing that and we're going to show you those in a second they give you some kind of like suggestions about the most logical ways to do that remember you're always trying to lose the most logical fingers you can to play anything in the guitar otherwise you're just stumbling all over yourself down at the bottom of the neck The Logical way was just to use your four fingers up and down the four Frets further up the neck you've got to learn how to do these finger shifts because you've got to get four fingers to play five notes how do these finger shifts work well let's say that I wanted to control the guitar up in this range right here let's say I wanted to have my index finger on my fifth fret which for most of you is your second dot up the neck on my low E string that note will actually be an a right there if you look at your finger chart now on this chart right here now this is six Frets on the neck of a guitar six Frets on the neck of the guitar this is what should rightly be called the box guitar players are always talking about the Box the box is the area of the neck of the guitar that your fingers are occupying at any particular point and most people think the box is only four Frets the the Frets that your fingers are literally occupying but you should know better than that at this point you know that it actually requires five Frets to control the guitar in a moment you'll see why I've also included the sixth fret the reason is sometimes your index finger here is going to reach out an extra fret to get notes up on this fret up here and other times your pinky is going to reach out an extra fret to get notes down here so what really should be you should always be thinking about on the neck of the guitar is six Frets because that's what it really requires to control the guitar now let's say like I said your finger is on that fifth fret your index finger is right there and let's say that on this chart that's this note right here and you want to know how to control the 12 note system going up the neck starting right there well in many ways it works the same way first of all I can see how to begin my chromatic scale I can just walk up four Frets which on this chart would be just like walking up these four notes right like this right like that question is where do you go next after you've gotten up to that pinky note up there where is the next note higher than that well the main thing I want to tell you is interestingly enough the Guitar Works further up the neck pretty much the same way that it does down at the bottom of the neck for example can you answer these two questions your low E string and your high E string how far apart in Pitch are those two notes they're two octaves apart right so you know what this note right here and this note right here are two octaves apart just like you know what's going on down here at the bottom of the neck is the same thing that's going on everywhere these two notes from your low E string to the same fret on your high E string is still two octaves wherever you are in the neck another thing is how far is it how many notes are there between this open string and this open string there's four notes right that's what we've been understanding about the guitar in between there's always four notes think of your two open strings as being like the same fret on two different strings so my question is this see like this note right here how far apart is this note in this note how many notes are in between this fret on this string and the same fret on the next string the answer is there's four notes in between there too so what I'm saying is when you're fingering further up the neck it works pretty much the same way that it does when it's down here so now remember our question is where are we going to find the next note higher than this one on the guitar we played we knew that we had our four fingers and we've got our four notes till we get to our pinky note on the neck of the guitar I'm starting right here and I'm going one two three four where is the next note higher than this well one place that I could play that note would be on this next fret right here and one thing that I could do is scoot my pinky out like that in extra fret so my pinky is the is the finger that's playing two notes right there so that's what's known as a pinky shift shifting my pinky out like that to get a next note the only thing is that's kind of an awkward and difficult thing to make my finger do most people are not muscled where their finger really likes having to make that jump like that particularly when you remember that the Guitar Works the same way up here that it did down at the bottom of the neck there's another place where you can play that fifth note what if this was actually literally the bottom of the guitar neck like we were talking about a few minutes ago after I had played my chromatic scale and gotten up to my pinky where would I have gone to next I would have shifted to the next open string wouldn't I if I was playing down here and and I got to my pinky note where was the next note higher than that it was the open string on the next string well now that I'm playing up here I don't have that open string to play anymore when I go up like this but the thing to realize is the open string would be the equivalent of this fret right here and what you're going to find out is you see this note that I could have played with my pinky right here that's the same as the note that's on this fret on the next string over listen [Music] isn't that the same pitch there's two different places to play that same note just like when I was down at the bottom of the neck here the note that would have been on the fifth fret on this string is the same as the next open string when I'm playing a little further up the neck the note that's right here is the same as the note that's right here so when it comes to that fifth note I have a choice as to where to play it and most people would agree that when you're going up the scale a better thing to do is you start here as we've already noted on the chart and you play up until you get to your pinky note but don't do a pinky shift here better thing to do is reach out an extra fret over here on your next string with your index finger see I've moved my index finger over a string but down one fret to play that note and then here's my actual finger shift I scoot that finger across the Fret back onto the Fret it would have normally been on my index finger is therefore controlling two notes so if I start here I'm going then I reach out and then I do my shift and then I can continue to walk right up that string if we look at the chart here again that what I'm suggesting then is after you play up here to your pinky you could play that note right there but that's the same note there as right there that note is the same as that note so going up the scale a better thing to do is do what are called index shifts you reach out an extra fret with your index finger and play that note right there and then your finger scoots across the Fret to come back to the Fret it would have normally been on so your index finger is playing those two notes and then you can continue to walk right up that string until you come to here with your pinky note on that string where do you go to next same thing again you could play the next higher note right there with your pinky but that would be awkward and cumbersome to do better thing is to reach out an extra fret on your next string play a note there scoot your finger across index shift like that start to walk up that string till you get to your pinky and you see these would be just like what you were doing with your open strings down there when you were down at the bottom in the neck you know you played up to your pinky and then you went to the next open string think of these think of this fret as being the equivalent of the open string you walk up to your pinky note here and then you reach out and you have to do another index shift here then you walk up the string until you get to your pinky and now this is where things get a little interesting remember these are the two strings that we learned are tuned one note closer together these two that's going to affect your chromatic scale fingering when we're down at the bottom of the neck we just played up three Frets and then we changed to the next open string but a better way to do it further up the neck is play up until you get to your pinky and then since these two strings excuse me are tuned one note closer together you can go directly from there to your index finger on the next string excuse me um without doing a finger shift because these two strings are tuned one note closer together you can go directly from there to there without doing a finger shift in fact if you played that note right there on that string you would be repeating the same note as that note right there and you don't want to play the same note twice well that makes it easier when you go from this string from your G string to your B string you don't have to do any kind of a shift because since the strings are tuned one note closer together you don't have to do that so now there once you get to there you just walk up that string until you get to your pinky but then you're going to have to do one more index finger shift up on your high E string like this because these two strings are tuned they're normal distance apart and then you're going to walk up this string finally until you get to your highest note up there these are what are called index shifts and you generally do these when you're going up the scale so that you don't wind up shifting away from your hand remember if I just shifted with my pinky going up I'd have to be forcing this finger like a part like this and that's kind of a clumsy thing to do every now and then it presents itself as the logical thing to do remember you have an option at two different ways to play that note but most people would agree that going up the scale having to shift with your pinky like that is kind of an awkward thing it's easier to reach out and then shift back into the box so now watch this here's my chromatic scale further up the neck I play up my four Frets I reach out an extra fret I play that note there I scoot it back onto the Fret it would have been on I walk up that string reach out an extra fret there walk up that string do another pink index finger shift there but here because these two strings are tuned one note closer together however have one more so here it is again [Music] [Music] now consider this as we're saying the Guitar Works pretty much the same way up the neck here that it works down at the bottom of the neck we're seeing that so I got a question for you your hand is in this position on the neck of the guitar right where's the lowest note that you can control well I would say it would be this note right here on your low E string on your index finger you know these notes that are lower than there and down to the open string they're not going to be anything you can really control so if this is the lowest note you can control with your fingers where's the highest note you can control let me suggest that it's that last pinky note up there on your high E string so here's the lowest note you can play here's the highest note you can play with your pinky up here how far apart in Pitch are those two notes just like down at the bottom of the neck they're about two and one-third octaves apart remember when we learned we were down here and we went from our open string up to our pinky note on our high string up there that was about two and one-third octaves worth of notes well when we're playing further up the neck up here it works the same way for example here's one octave one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen now about halfway across the neck then I can do another octave one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen these two notes are two octaves apart aren't they my low E string up to my high E string on the same fret they're two octaves apart aren't they but then I can continue to go four more notes up that high E string so from my highest note to my lowest note down there is about two two and a third octaves worth of notes just like it was down at the bottom of the neck one octave two octaves and then about a third octaves now that's going up the scale that's how you go up the scale using index shifts so as you don't shift away from your hand and now how do we come back down the scale now we're going to start up here on our pinky note on our high E string we've got to figure out how to get two and one-third octaves back down to our low E string again so let's look at this chart over here now we're going to work our way down the scale and we're going to start with our pinky note up here that's our highest note isn't it and we're going to work our way back down So eventually we get down to our lower note well certainly we can see how to begin our our chromatic scale our descending chromatic scale you just with your four fingers you just walk down these same four Frets like that until you get to your index finger on the guitar that would be like this question is where is the next note lower in Pitch than this where is the next note lower than this well one place it would be would be that right there on the Shaded fret right and I could play that note by shifting my index finger out of the box like this see like that now my index finger is playing two notes it's playing that note and that's then it's going down to play that note too but that's an awkward kind of movement too anytime you have to shift what I call away from your hand here's the rest of your hand here and when you make that shifting movement and it's away from where the rest of your fingers are it's kind of an awkward thing to do so when you're coming down the scale remember this note right here just like when we saw when we were going up the scale this note on this string and remember my four fingers are occupying the Frets just above that this note right here is the same as this note right here on the previous string listen [Music] oops when it comes to that fifth note you always have two different places where you can play it when we're coming down a better thing to do most people would agree now your pinky is not going to like this at first but a better thing to do is reach out an extra fret with your pinky on the previous string that one on the chart here be like once you've worked your way down to your index finger right here remember this note right here is the same as this note right here and so a better thing to do coming down the scale would be to reach your pinky out an extra fret like that your pinky is not going to like this at first because it's your weakest finger but this is one of the things you're just going to have to work on one of the things you're going to have to practice to develop coordination and strengthen your pinky after you've played that note there you your your pinky has to play two notes your pinky has to do double duty you scoot your finger your pinky across the Fret like that and pick up that note and then you can continue walking down that string until you get to this note right there now let me show you on the neck of the guitar again so here I am and I'm starting with my pinky and I work my way down until I come to my index finger but then I go to my previous string reach out an extra fret and then scoot see how my pinky is playing two different notes it's scooting back onto the Fret it was normally on and then I walk down that string and theoretically you can just keep on going with that but consider this remember now these once again are the two strings that are tuned one note closer together right well what that means is it's just the reverse of this whenever you're going between these two strings in either Direction you don't have to do a shift so now I can go right from my pinky right to this note right here no shift required in fact once again if I reached out and tried to do a pinky shift on this fret I would find that this note is exactly the same as this note and I would be repeating the same note twice and I don't want to do that so that's going to be a little tricky you're going to have to listen carefully to make sure you're not skipping any notes or repeating any notes twice it's always whatever Direction you're going in between your G string and your b string there is one fewer note so you don't do an index shift on that string when you're going up the scale and you don't do a pinky shift on that string when you're going down the scale walk down the rest of that string however to that fret right there and then you are going to have to do another pinky shift on this string like that walk your way down until you get to that fret right there where do you go next another pinky shift right here remember your pinky is playing two notes walk down that string till you come to your index finger and then you're gonna have one more pinky shift to do right here and then finally walk down that last string and again two and one-third octaves later you're back down at the bottom of the neck again now here I come back down Reach Out do a pinky shift now here I don't have to do a pinky shift because these are the two strings that are tuned one note close together in fact if I played this note and this note they'd be the same note I'm repeating the same note twice I don't want to do that so I'm not going to do a pinky shift on this string however I do have one I to do right there and I have another one to do right there and another one to do right there so you go up with your index shifts [Music] I don't have to do one there and then you come down with your pinky shifts I do one there but I don't do one there [Music] and you're going to want to practice these all in different areas of the neck [Music] okay well that's all the time we have to show you for this stuff for this week but that is basically all there is to know about moving your fingers on the guitar and also the right way to sit try putting that guitar on your left leg touch all four Frets before you start to go and that you'll know you're in the proper position and then just get to work on those chromatic scales all right well this is Scotty West signing off for now and we'll see you next week on absolutely understand guitar we'll talk about some more fascinating stuff okay see you then bye-bye