FIND SHARPS AND FLATS
Welcome! Continuing on from last month, we’re going to take a deeper look at finding notes on the neck, and connect the fingerboard to what we know about music theory. Let’s start with unpacking some of the logic in music theory—perhaps it will make a little more sense after this than is first apparent!
Within Western music, the naming conventions in music originate with the Major scale. Whether we’re talking about note names, chords, or intervals, the Major scale is our default, and everything else is labeled as it differs from that. We also know that the scale of C Major is particularly useful because it contains no sharps or flats. This is because the sequence of ‘natural’ notes in C corresponds perfectly to the distribution of tones and semitones in the Major scale.
Reading music is much easier when you can glance at the sheet and see immediately what the intervals are
The template for a Major scale is ‘tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone’—often written as T, T, S, T, T, T, S or in countries that use ‘whole step’ and ‘half step’ instead of tone and semitone, W, W, H, W, W, W, H. Either way, the tones or whole steps are two frets apart,
