letters

[IYE bassist]

i can read tabs but thats about it. where can i learn all the letters of the notes?

[stephanie]

Welcome to Talkbass. If you do a search you can find plenty of threads on note reading/site reading, as the subject comes up often, there might also be some links to charts showing all the notes on the fretboard.

Anyway, a (good) teacher can be beneficial in helping you with this.

You might want to start off with learning the open string names, which are E, A, D, G. So, for example, the first fret on your E string is obviously going to be F, followed by F#, G, etc...Once you become familiar with the note names you can try picking out notes around the fretboard. You can guess, for example, where all the Cs are on the fretboard and then where all the Gs are. Other exercises I like to do are 2 octave scales up and down the fretboard, as well as playing the chromatic scale (being sure to be aware of what notes I'm playing).

Hope this helps.

[Jazzin']

Also, if you want to read off of a music sheet (with notes), this may help:

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

this is a staff (5 lines), if a note is on a line or in a space, it sorresponds to those letters above (in bass clef). These notes continue abouve the staff, and below the staff in the same order you see there. this is a chromatic scale (increases by ONE semi-tome (or one fret)):

Starting on E (the lowest note on a normal 4 stringer)
E F F# [G] G# A A# B C C# D D# E F G G# [A] A# B
(boxed letter correspond to the lowest and highest note on the staff above)
an A# is the same thing as a Bb, a C# is the same thing as a Db, etc...

PS, most music will have a key signature (the bunch of #s or bs at the begining of the staff after the clef) these mean that ALL notes of that letter are sharp or flat unless otherwise indicated.

hope this helps

[IYE bassist]

Originally Posted by stephanie

Welcome to Talkbass. If you do a search you can find plenty of threads on note reading/site reading, as the subject comes up often, there might also be some links to charts showing all the notes on the fretboard.

Anyway, a (good) teacher can be beneficial in helping you with this.

You might want to start off with learning the open string names, which are E, A, D, G. So, for example, the first fret on your E string is obviously going to be F, followed by F#, G, etc...Once you become familiar with the note names you can try picking out notes around the fretboard. You can guess, for example, where all the Cs are on the fretboard and then where all the Gs are. Other exercises I like to do are 2 octave scales up and down the fretboard, as well as playing the chromatic scale (being sure to be aware of what notes I'm playing).

Hope this helps.

ok thanx alot