Learning guitar theory, so music theory specific to the guitar, will free up your playing and take your performance level to previously unimagined heights. Learn the basics with our online beginner guitar lessons, and in the meanwhile, start learning the music theory of playing the guitar as well.

If you want to improvise solos, make up your own licks, write your own songs, you’ll need to understand music theory for guitar.

You should first of all start out with the most basic concept, learning the notes on the guitar. It is only after this, that you should move on to the rest of the guitar theory lessons.

The basis of playing the guitar is knowing the notes on the fretboard. You’ll have to learn guitar notes if you ever want to play anything on your own, be it chord strumming or lead guitar.

A musical note is defined as a specific pitch of sound.

Notes are grouped into a musical alphabet, ranging from A to G.

A – B – C – D – E – F – G

Some notes have accidentals, which means they can be sharp or flat. If you take the notes in order, including the accidentals (sharps and flats), you will have the chromatic scale:

A – A# – B – C – C# – D – D# – E – F – F# – G – G#

All notes can be covered with the above notation, since the musical alphabet restarts over and over as you move up or down the notes. If you start out from any given note and reach it again either up or downwards, you will be one octave away from the starting note.

The reason is that doubling, or splitting in half the frequency of any note will result in the same note, only one octave higher (the OCT in OCTave is latin, for eight, after the eight notes in the musical alphabet), so they can actually be called pitch classes.

In the standard EADGBE tuning, the notes on the guitar fretboard will be distributed as the guitar notes chart shows below. You might want to print this diagram, so you’ll always have it handy.

Understanding fret intervals is pretty straight forward actually.

One fret left or right from a given note on the fretboard, no matter whether it’s up or down the neck, is known as a semitone, or half-step, or half-note. These 3 expressions mean exactly the same thing.

Two frets left or right from any given note on the guitar fretboard is known as 2 semitones, or whole-step, or whole-note. Again, you will hear these terms used in a mixed fashion, just know that they mean exactly the same thing. I prefer using semitones since I found that beginner guitarists understand it better.

So again, 1 semitone is one fret, 2 semitones are 2 frets, 3 semitones are 3 frets, and so on. Here is an example, this is true for all notes on the chromatic scale.

It’s important to know, how the notes on the strings are interrelated. Knowing this, you will be able to tune your guitar, form chords and understand scales better.

When you pluck fret 5 of most strings (with the exception of string G), you will get the exact tone of the string higher in pitch from the given string. This is because the strings are tuned to be 5 semitones apart (4 semitones with the G -> B strings).

Try it for yourself. If your guitar is in tune, the notes should be the same as describes in the note diagram above.

From the string relation diagram, you could already know how intervals work from one string to another. For example, since fret 5 on the low E string is the same pitched note as plucking the A string open, one semitone (or half note) up from fret 5 would be fret 1 on string A.

Consequently, 2 semitones (or one whole note) up from fret 5 string E, would be fret 2 of string A.

Knowing the notes on the guitar, and knowing the relation of the strings is vital to any guitarist.