Ask Brendan is a monthly column where Guitar Educator, Brendan Burns, answers questions about music and the pursuit of Understanding and Mastering the guitar.

What is a Guitar?

November 03

Q: I’ve been playing piano for 5 years and a friend just recently gave me a guitar. I was wondering if you could help me understand how the piano and the guitar relate to each other. I was hoping that I could use my knowledge of the piano and music theory and apply it to guitar. Is this possible?

B: From a theoretical standpoint, yes. You can use information from one to help the other. From a technical standpoint, not really. Although playing the piano for five years probably means that you’ve have good muscle development and dexterity, only some of that applies on guitar.

I am going to use this lesson to go over some theoretical and technical aspects of the instrument. I suggest you sit down with a teacher to go over the physical techniques necessary to play (give me a ring if you are in the area).

The Guitar’s Range: The Guitar’s range is from the 2nd E below middle C up to 3rd E above middle C.

The Guitar on the Staff: In order to write for the instrument on one staff, the guitar is written an octave higher than it sounds on the G clef. This puts the lowest note 3 ledger lines below the staff, rather than on the Bass Clef. The highest octave is usually written with ledger lines above the staff plus an “8va —” to avoid too many ledger lines.

I have a flash interactive page that shows the first four frets of the guitar and their corresponding note locations on the staff (click here).

Harmonics: There are a variety of ways to get harmonics. For this topic, I’m just going to go over the natural harmonics. Natural Harmonics are achieved by plucking an open string normally with the right hand and lightly touching the string above the fret with the left hand. Playing the Natural Harmonic on the 12th fret produces the note an octave above the open string. Playing the Harmonic on the 7th fret produces the note an octave and a 5th above the open string. Playing the Harmonic on the 5th fret produces the note two octaves above the open string. Playing the Harmonic on the 9th fret produces the note two octaves and a third above the open string. Another way to think of this is:

12th & 5th fret harmonic = Octaves of Open String
7th fret harmonic = 5th of Open String
9th fret Harmonic = 3rd of Open String

Notes of the Guitar: The notes of the guitar ascend up the string (towards the soundhole and bridge). Each fret away from the nut (open string) raises the note a half step, or one key on the keyboard.

Note of the Guitar Assets:
A Flash version of the Notes of the Guitar and their pitches (click here).

A GIF & PDF version of the Notes of the Guitar to print out and add to your papers (click here)

The Guitar’s Tuning: The guitar is tuned in fourths except for the third between the G/B strings. From the low E, up a fourth to A, up a fourth to D, up a fourth to G, up a third to B, and up a fourth to E. Why is so? Who knows?! The bummer about this tuning is that movements from one string to another are not always equal. The plus side is that we can get some pretty cool voicings.

The Guitar’s Complexity: The Guitar can be a little confusing at first; so can the piano. Imagine playing a piano without the keyboard. What would it be like to reach inside the piano and pluck strings to play music? The piano uses the keyboard to provide order over the hundreds of strings in a piano. With the guitar, the player must provide the order and impose it on the instrument. One way to do this is with visualization techniques and some fretboard navigation tools. I’ll save those for a later lesson or column.