I will not introduce the staff or reading notes on the staff as that would be for the more classically
inclined.
And the course will become considerably boring -
I mean longer. If you are into that I would suggest you to try out the Hal Leonard books but I think you
can avoid that unless you want to become a professional session musician in a context where sight reading
is fundamental.
I'm saying this because my first guitar teacher subjected me to two years of sight reading which
ultimately proved to be useless with the exception of learning to play the piano later on.
Said that, rhythmic notation, time signatures, note values, reading guitar tabs and understanding
what the hell you're playing remains essential knowledge to have. BPM stands for beats per minute.
It defines the speed of the beat of the song.
Pink Floyd songs are around 100 BPM the Slayer songs are around 200. Mostly anything you will ever
play will be between 50 and 200 BPM. The most common time signature and the division of time is 4/4.
1/4 it is equal to one beat. 4/4 are equal to 4 beats which in turn make a measure.
So in 4/4 you would count the beats with 1 2 3 4, by default the accent falls on the 1st and
the 3rd beat, so it's *1*  2  *3*  4.
There are other time signatures, like 3/4 where the accent falls on the first beat, it's *1* 2
3  *1*  2  3.
There are other time signatures but we will play mainly in 4/4 forwards and possibly in 3/4
throughout the course.
The other times signatures like 5/4 or 7/4 are used predominantly in progressive rock
and progressive metal. Tabs are pretty straightforward to read.
We have the six strings where the highest one is the first string of the guitar and the bottom one is
the sixth string of the guitar, the
thickest one. We'll play exercises on the sixth string
in this video. I would suggest you to download the Guitar Pro software or its open Source counterpart
TuxGuitar and play around a bit with them to write and read guitar tabs.
Now: note values. We said that one quarter is equal to one beat.
A half note instead is worth two beats and a whole note, four beats. To get comfortable with these new values
we'll be playing them and reading them by playing an exercise on the sixth string of the guitar.
If you need to stop a note, a string, from ringing either use your left hand by placing your fingers
by placing your fingers on the fretboard this way or by using your right hand palm.
This way.
Here we have a whole note.
Notice the white inside the circle with no stems.
Then we have a half note.
Then another half note.
Notice the white inside the circle with the stem.
Then we have another whole note.
And then four quarter notes.
Notice the black inside the circle and the stems.
Now let's play the exercise and remember to place your fingertips at the very center of every fret.
And remember to make the notes and the strings play as clearly as possible.
Let's introduce two new note values. Now,
there are 8th notes and 16th notes. Eight notes further
divide a quarter in two: a downbeat and an upbeat.
So with four 1/4
we would have four beats, like this.
One two three four. With eight notes
we would have eight notes in a measure, this way:
one-and two-and three-and four-and. Now, sixteenth notes further
divide an eighth note in two. We will have four
16th notes in a beat or in a quarter. We would have (at a slower tempo) one-one-and-and two-two-and-and three-three-and-and
four-four-and-and.
Let's now play another exercise with all the note values that we've learned until now.
Every note value as a corresponding rest symbol.
Here's a whole note.
Whose value is four beats.
That's a full measure in 4/4.
Then we have two half notes, four quarter notes, eight eighth notes and sixteen sixteenth notes.
When you combine them with actual notes you have music.
So take your time to think this through.
In the second to last measure we played in downbeats, in the last measure we played in upbeats. Keep practicing
until you get these last two measures right.
Preferably with a metronome.
And remember to always start slow with any exercise.
In the next video I'll give you some new exercises to help you stretch your fingers a little bit.
Then we'll talk a little more about notation, chord diagrams and tied notes specifically.
See you then.
