June 2020 – Guitar Lessons with Birdsnake

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

How to Read Guitar Chord Charts and Diagrams

Guitar chord charts, or chord diagrams are simple visual representations of how to play a chord on the guitar neck. Chord diagrams can show finger placement on the guitar neck, musical intervals, music notes, or even fingers and notes.

The most basic type of guitar chord charts will show where to put your fingers on the guitar, which strings to play open, and which guitar strings to skip.

Some chord charts will show an X at the top of the chart for strings that you are supposed to skip, while other charts will just have a blank spot which also means to skip that string.

The O above a string means to play it open, and the dots with numbers represent which finger to use, and where to place it. 1 is pointer, 2 is middle, 3 is ring, 4 is little finger, and if you see a T then you wrap your thumb around the top of the neck.

If a chart doesn’t start with the open strings there will always be a number next to it so that you can tell which fret the chord starts at. Here is a C major bar chord where your index finger bars across the 8th fret. Notice the number 8 next to the chart

Guitar Chord Charts Showing Intervals or Notes

Other guitar chord diagrams will show you the musical intervals of a chord. Sometimes the intervals will be on the dots and other times they will be below the diagram. Another common type of guitar chord chart will show the notes within a chord.

Interval names on the dots. Root, seventh, third, and fifth intervals are shown

Finger positions on the chart with interval names below the chart

The Occasional Random X in Guitar Charts

Every once in a while you will come across a guitar diagram that has an X on the neck. This simply means to block that string with one of your fingers. This type of chord chart isn’t typical but you will see one occasionally.

Understanding Ted Greene Chord Charts

Ted Greene was a guitar genius and he came up with his own way to show melodies within a chord diagram. The dots are where your fingers start, and the the X, square, and triangle represent what notes you play next. If you ever see an O it is an optional note, and it’s also important to keep holding as much of the chord as you can.

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

How to Read Guitar Tab

In this beginner guitar lesson, you will learn how to read guitar tab. Guitar tab, or tablature, or as some people say, guitar tabs, are a simple system for writing music for guitar.

Guitar tab is a series of lines that represent the guitar strings, and the there are numbers that represent which fret to press. The bottom line on tab represents the big E string on your guitar.

There are a collection of symbols in tab that represent different guitar techniques such as muting, bending, sliding, hammer ons, pull offs, tapping, and harmonics.

When the numbers are in a series you play the notes one at a time, and when the numbers are stacked you play them all togther:

Guitar Tab Symbols for Bending Strings

Bends in guitar tab are represented by arrows. They will sometimes have a note at the top to show how much you are supposed to bend a string. 1/2 means to bend the note up one tone, and 1 1/2 means to bend the note up 3 tones. If there is nothing at the top then it is a whole step bend which is 2 tones. Some bends require you to pre-bend a note before you pick. Pre bends in guitar tab have an arrow going straight up before another arrow coming back down.

Guitar Tab Symbols for Muting Strings

If you see XXXX in your guitar tab it means to mute the strings with your fretting hand, and if you see PM or Palm Mute at the top then it means to palm mute the strings with the palm of your picking hand.

Guitar Tab Symbols for Slide, Hammer On and Pull Off

The hammer on and pull off symbol in guitar tab looks like a note tie from sheet music, and the slide symbol is an angled line. Hammering on is where you fret a note with one finger and the “hammer on” another finger. Pulling off in guitar is when you fret a note, pick it, and then pull off to sound another note with a different finger.

Tab symbols for hammer on, pull off, slide up, and slide down

The Tapping Symbol in Guitar Tab

In guitar tabs the symbol for tapping is normally a “T” above the note, and in oldschool text tab it was like “——-T5——” to tap on the 5th fret. Tapping in guitar is when you use a finger from the picking hand to tap a note.

Harmonics in guitar tab will normally say “harmonic”, ‘NH” for natural harmonic, or “PH” for pinch harmonics.

The vibrato symbol in guitar tab is a squiggly line next to a note or above the lines

Here are the example blues licks and open chords from the video

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

How to Tune Your Guitar With a Tuner or Without a Tuner

In this lesson you will learn to tune your guitar with a tuner and I will also give you some methods to tune a guitar without a tuner. Tuning your guitar is one of the most important guitar lessons you will ever have. Your guitar has to be in tune for anything to sound right, so while you are learning to play guitar you need to be in tune.

When you are tuning your guitar with a tuner, basically you just have to align the “needle” line with the center of the tuner for each string.

One important thing to know is that if your guitar string is sharp you need to loosen it until it is flat, and then tune back up to pitch.

If you don’t have a tuner you can use tune with the 5th fret. The 5th fret of the E string will be the same note as the open A string, so you can tune the A string to the 5th fret of the E string on your guitar. The same thing works for the A and D string, as well as the D and G string. When you get to the G and B strings, you have to use the 4th fret on the G string to tune the B string. When you are at the B and little E string you use the 5th fret again.

Tuning your guitar with the 5th Fret:

You can also use octaves to check that the notes sound in tune:

Another way I tune my guitar without a tuner is to tune to an open chord. A regular E major chord is a good reference for hearing whether or not your guitar is in tune.

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

Learning The Notes of the Guitar Neck

In this lesson on the guitar fretboard we talk about how to find any note on the neck of the guitar. We will go over exactly how to find any note, and I’ll share some strategies for how to start memorizing the notes on the fretboard.

The most important things to take away from this video is the names of the open strings on guitar – EADGBE, the musical alphabet – ABCDEFG, and the spaces between the notes.

One easy way to remember the string names is with a mnemonic. “Even Average Dogs Get Bones Eventually” is one, but we go over a few in the video.

The first thing to know is that there are sharp notes or flat notes between some of the notes, and other notes have no space.

There is no space between E and F, and there is no space between B and C. All of the other notes will have one note between them, and it will be a sharp or flat note.

Sharps and flats represent the exact same tone, but the name can change depending on what key you are in. As a beginner, it’s easiest to remember that one fret lower on the guitar is flat, and one fret higher on the guitar is sharp.

One way to begin to learn the fretboard is to memorize small groupings of notes

Another way to learn the notes on the guitar is to recognize the visual pattern of the location of a note.

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

What are Notes on Guitar?

In this lesson we will talk about what a note is on guitar. A note is a symbol for a pitch, and a pitch is literally a sound wave.

A note is a symbol that represents a pitch. A note can be a music note on a staff, a key on the piano, or a string or fret position on the guitar neck.

This lesson only discusses the most basic ideas you need to know about notes on the guitar, and in the next lesson we will go into more detail about memorizing the notes.

Here are the notes on a guitar neck:

Here are notes on a piano:

The open strings on guitar are EADGBE from largest to smallest:

The notes up the Big E string Start on E and work their way up. Open notes on the guitar repeat at the 12th fret