Day 21

Did you have fun playing all those random arpeggios?

Guess what's up tonight!

MORE OF THAT

Okay. Theory again. Sorry. God, I"m bad at living up to the name here.

The notes with the letter names we've been playing are all part of something called the major scale.

I'm not going to talk about whole steps and half steps because you can get that anywhere. We're gonna TALK ABOUT FRETS.

If you're fretting an E, the next fret up on that string will be F. Always. If you're fretting an A, the fret after the next one up will be B. Alwaty.

So here's the circle, over and over. |-| indicates a fret you skip.

|a|-|B|C|-|D|-|E|F|-|G|-|A|-|B|C|-|D|-|E|F|-|G|...

Got it?
Good!

B and C are buddies, E and F are buddies, everyone else likes their personal space. Or something. Remember it how you can.

And this applies for everyone who's playing a fretted instrument (except dulcimer. Dulcimer's fretted differently. Dulcimers take skipping a fret a step further and just don't have that fret. Diatonic instead of chromatic).

So, you know the names of the strings on what you're playing, right?
Ukulele, you're probably gCEA or GCEA
Bass, EADG
And Guitar, GDAEBe. Which, if you go high-pitch to low, Easter Bunny Gets Drunk After Easter.

(Baritone uke gets Easter Bunny Gets Drunk and bass has Get Drunk After Easter. And ukulele gets...guhSEEEUUH. Sorry. That's how I remember it. gCEA spells guhSEEEEuuuhh.)

Okay. Now you know your strings. Pick one.

Let's pick the G string, because it makes me laugh inside to say that.
Look up at the head of your instrument with the tuners. The thing that separates the part of the string you play from the part of the string that's being wrapped around the tuners is called the nut. I've probably said that before. I don't know. I'm not an expert. This isn't even a real car.

So pretend the nut's a fret. It looks like a fret, it's parallel to the frets. You're good.

If it helps you remember, lightly put your finger on the tiner-windy bit of the string. Then play your open string. The note your string makes when the string is open is the name of the string note.

This lab coat has someone else's name on it. I don't know what's in this beaker.

Now, start counting. If it's yoru G string, you'd skip the next (first) fret and your next fret is A. If you're playing your G string (haha), the second fret will be A.. Now keep going. Find all the letters on the whole string.

Then do that thing from last nigth on that string.

Then cry over how much more you know than you knew.

Then try to get some sleep.