The whole system, in four numbers

Western music runs on a very small set of parts. Before anything else, here is the size of the thing you are learning.

12notes in total

7letter names

5that borrow a name

1fret per note

Every scale, chord and key in this course is built from those twelve. There is no thirteenth note waiting for you later.

Twelve, then it repeats

Music uses twelve notes. Not twelve per song. Twelve in total. After the twelfth, the names start over from the beginning, just higher.

Guitar makes this easy to see. One fret is one note. Move up twelve frets on any string and you land back on the note you started from.

That repeat point is called the octave. It is why fret 12 gets the double dot.

Walk the twelve

Every note on the neck, nothing hidden. Pick a string and click up it one fret at a time. No note gets skipped, and twelve frets along you find the name you started with.

0

1

2

3 •

4

5 •

6

7 •

8

9 •

10

11

12 •

Try the low E string. Open E, then climb to fret 12 and find E again.

What twelve in a row sounds like

The first sounds like a staircase. The second sounds like music, and the only difference is that five notes were left out. That choice is what a scale is, and it is Grade 3.

Check yourself

You play an open A string, then the note twelve frets higher. What is that second note?

Put these in order

Put the first six notes in order, starting from A

Counting upward from A, one fret at a time. Two of these have borrowed names.

1tap a note below
2tap a note below
3tap a note below
4tap a note below
5tap a note below
6tap a note below

Common mix-up

Three things you may have picked up

Most people arrive with at least one of these, usually from a piano diagram.

Sharps and flats are the black keys, so they are somehow lesser notes.

All twelve are equal. The piano layout is a keyboard design decision, and on guitar every note gets an identical fret.

Other musical traditions use notes we do not have.

Many traditions use pitches between our frets. Our twelve are a choice, not a law, and Grade 1 comes back to why we made it.

You have to memorise all 72 positions on the neck.

You need about ten anchors and one shape. The last lesson in this grade shows the method.

Select every correct one

Which of these are true about an octave?

What to keep

Takeaways

Twelve notes in total, then the names repeat an octave higher.
One fret is one note, also called a half step.
Seven letters cover twelve notes, so five of them borrow a name.
Everything after this is about which of the twelve you choose to use.

Now go use it

Fretboard TrainerDrill where those twelve actually live on the neck.