Guitar Resources from Phil

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Many thanks to the geniuses who helped make these guitar charts I borrowed
from to make many of the actual diagrams and charts you'll see here]

Some Notes About Notation...

Folk musicians and those blues cats back in the 1900's recognized this fact, and said "the heck with these notation charts" (or whatever equivalent words blues cats used back then) and started focusing more on the FORMS that they found sitting all over the guitar.  Many of them played strictly by ear, and quite a few didn't even name notes.

They made stuff up as they went along.  They forged the rebar and laid the foundations of practically all popular modern guitar music... ain't that amazin'?  Truly we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Tablature 

Suffice it to say, a "tab" is a picture of the guitar neck, oriented as shown above.

The Tab Explained...

Check out this tab of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" with fret numbers shown on skinny String 1:

Ma  -  ry   had     a     lit  - tle  lamb        

Alternative Ways to Chart Guitar Parts...

Yo dude, if ya already know a few chords, what's wrong with this?

    G                            D                       Em         

I  read  the  news  today  oh  boy

(Guitar Chords on words, or what I call "Lead Sheet" format)


-- or THIS ?

Chord Mapping:

4
/       G      D      /   Em              /   C       F       /  Em            /
4        v  v   v  v        v   v  v   v         v  v   v   v       v   v   v   v  ( "v" = 1 beat or downstrum)    

WHERE THERE ARE 4 BEATS PER MEASURE; (4/4 TIME MEANS 4 QUARTER NOTES, OR BEATS, to a measure).
Between the "/" marks lie 4 beats (one measure).  If there's one chord in there, it gets 4 beats; if there are two chords, they each get 2 beats.  There are many variations and elaborations to this simple concept, which I call a  CHORD MAP...

More on alternative guitar charting later, so why not keep a-scrollin' down?

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TUNING your guitar can be a huge challenge, and especially important if you're playing in a style which calls for being in tune...
Recent metal styles use Drop D, Drop C# and Drop C a lot.
And besides regular E Standard, we often run into Eb Standard, and even D Standard.

For in-depth tuning info, you might try going to:

http://www.howtotuneaguitar.org

               


The TUNING Thing...

   Yes, you really can tune a guitar by ear.  Once upon a time, that was the only way guitarists did tune.  Follow the steps shown above, and any guitar can be put into tune with itself.  The trick is deciding which string you consider in tune, and which string you're matching up to the in tune string.

                    CHORDS REALLY SOUND GREAT ON AN IN-TUNE GUITAR!

  This is a Guitar Chord Chart...               It corresponds to this view of the guitar: 

And so here is a guitar chord chart I made...  

The "A" chord form shown is of a type which I usually call First Position Chords.

First 12 Chords for Guitar:

 don't worry, it'll sound just fine.

The Musical Alphabet


Chords are named according to the Musical Alphabet which has only 7 letters,

A - B - C - D - E - F - G

Sing these to the tune of the "Alphabet Song," but after "G,"
sing "A-B-C-D-E-F-G," again, etc.

It's a very odd coincidence indeed, that there are 7 majorly discernible intervals in both the musical octave, or sound spectrum, and the colors in the visible light spectrum...
...it's like a rainbow!

...a tone and a color both repeat every octave at exactly twice the frequency as before.

I'm not saying this means there's a God, but it does make you wonder...

Guitar Neck Notes

(or Notes on the Guitar Neck)

or 4-String Bass...

All Rights Reserved on the charts shown above, babe