Beginner Guitar Lesson 5 -Learning Guitar String Notes

Now that you know the names of the strings and how to keep them in tune we can begin to learn the notes that are on each string of the guitar. This is going to be one of the longer lessons we’ve done so far, so take your time and watch the video above a couple of times if you need to.

Notes in the Musical Alphabet

There are only 7 notes we’re worried about in the musical alphabet.

These notes are separated by either a whole step/tone or a half step/tone. I use the word step & tone because different teachers use different wording. Below is an explanation on the guitar neck of what I mean by half or whole step/tone.

|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-
|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-
|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-
|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-
|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-
|——————-|——————-|——————-|——————-|—-

|-Semitone-|

| ———Whole Tone——-|

Tones or steps are measured by frets on the guitar. One semitone is one fret while a whole tone is two frets. You can see from the example image above, the semitone spans one fret while the whole tone spans two frets.

Now that we understand how to measure half and whole tones on the guitar we can refer to the table above that lists the spacing between each note. When there is a whole tone mentioned that means you must move up two frets and if it’s a semitone you only move up one fret.

Example on the Low E String

A quick example, we always start with the open string. So the low E string when played open is an E note. What comes after E? It’s F, referring to our table above we can see that there is only a semitone between E and F so we move up one fret to the first fret. So the first fret on the Low E string is an F.

Next note, after F comes G, and between F and G is a whole tone so we move up two frets from where we are right now which is the first fret. Moving up two frets brings us to the third fret.

After the G note we move back around the musical alphabet to the A note which is the beginning again. Between a G and an A note we have again one whole tone so we again move up two whole frets. So on the fifth fret of the E string we have an A note.

Time to Practice

So this is the outline of how to learn guitar string notes, how ever I don’t just want to give them all to you. For practice grab your guitar and go through all six strings up to the 5th fret and see if you can figure out what notes are where.

If you haven’t yet watch the video at the top of this page. I go through the first couple of strings with you if you want to ensure you’re doing it right. One tip, on the G string you only need to go up to the 4th fret not the 5th.

Next lesson I’ll be introducing how to tune a guitar just using the strings without having to use an electric tuner. You’ll want to know the notes on each string for this lesson. The video for the next lesson will also go over the notes that I want you to learn for practice in this lesson.