[MUSIC] Now some of you might to be a little worried. Wait a minute, I don't read music. Well it's not absolutely necessary that you're a great sight reader in order to be a great guitarist. So what we're going to do is we're going to give you the basics that you need, set you on the right path. And should you decide to continue studying, you'll have what you need moving forward. Now we've already talked about where notes happen on the fretboard, and now we're going to actually look at where they occur in written music. So we're going to start now talking about reading and writing music on the staff. This is called the staff. These are the lines on which music notation for your instrument will be written. At the beginning of the staff we have the clef. The clef determines the range or register of sounds of the notes, that would be written on the staff. For example, a bass player will have a different clef called a bass clef, to specify the lower range of the notes on his instrument. The guitar is written in a range or register that is denoted by the treble clef. There are other instruments that use this clef too, such as a flute. Some instruments have a range of more than one clef, such as a piano, which uses both bass and treble clefs. Here is an example of notes in the spaces. We have F, A, C, and E. Now here we have notes that are written on the actual lines. We have E, G, B, D and F. Now if we go above the lines and we go on the actual lines, we have A, C and E. These are called ledger lines. If we go above the staff in between the ledger lines, we have G, B and D. Now below the staff, if we go in between the ledger lines, we have D, B, G and E. Below the staff on the ledger lines we have C, A, and F. Now we're going to look at the range of notes on the guitar. This is where the open strings are written on the staff. [APPLAUSE] E, A, D, G, B and E. [MUSIC] So for those of you who might be looking for a good way to make this whole reading thing a little less painful, one thing that you might do is you can try simply using acronyms. For example, you'll notice that the notes in the spaces spell the word face, F-A-C-E. And the notes on the line are E, G, B, D, and F. Some people use the acronym, every good boy deserves fudge. It's a good way to remember the notes. One more comprehensive way that you might try, is to get a few pages of blank staff paper and fill in random notes without naming them, just fill in from top to bottom random notes. Both above, in between, on the lines and below the staff. And then go back and simply point to the note and name it. Now if you do that for enough pages, eventually you'll get tired of counting lines and spaces and then you'll remember. The note after awhile will just pop out and say, I'm an E and I'm an F. Now when you get good at that and it doesn't take you very long to recognize a note, then go back to the same pages that you've written of notes and try locating some of those notes. Point at the note and try locating the physical note on your instrument, like that's a B and then you grab a B, and that's a G and then you grab a G. And that way, its a good way towards moving towards learning the physical location of the notes that are on your instrument, and where they lie on the staff. Tab or tablature, might be described as a more elaborate fretboard map. Tab is a form of music notation that describes fingering positions on the instrument. It's been around for hundreds of years, however in more recent times it's become very popular, and quite important and necessary in helping the majority of music-loving guitarists learn their favorite tunes. It's an easy and quick way to get the music into your hands, and onto your instrument. With tab, the 6 lines represent the 6 strings of the guitar. The numbers on the strings represent the fret on which the note should be played. If the numbers occur in vertical column, it means that they're all played at the same time. Now it's important that tabs should not be used as an excuse to avoid learning traditional music notation. It's a very, very useful tool, in addition to just telling you where and what to play. Because things occur on the guitar in the same places, we have an A here, we have an A here, and we have an A here. Sometimes you can use tab to specify the locations, which a certain melody might be played. In addition, you can use it as a tool just to reinforce some of the learning of the traditional notation, like it will specify that the E occurs on the 5th string on the 7th fret. [SOUND] And so you can verify in cases where you have the traditional music along with the tab. You can just verify that that is [SOUND] the note that is actually written above. So it's important not to use it as an excuse not to learn how to read traditional music, but use it as a tool to help you on this journey.
