Blitzstar Guitar Instructional Series
Hello and thank you for reading my blog.
This first phase of the Blitzstar Guitar Instructional Series provides an overview of music theory as it relates to guitar playing.
In my blog I present and explain important music concepts and provide many of the tools needed (chords, scales, arpeggios…) to apply them.
The blog is progressive. It lays a foundation of basic music principles and logically builds and expands upon them. The posts are intended to be read in order. The information needed to understand each post is contained in the previous posts.
While the theory ranges from basic to advanced, the examples provided for each concept are relatively simple.
Basic Music Information
For this first phase of the series, the student will not need to be able to read music or understand specific rhythms (although I highly recommend that you learn to do so).
You will, however, need to know where the notes are located on a musical staff and where they are played on a guitar.
You will also need to have some basic information about rhythm notation.
Notes
The first two diagrams below will need to be referred to throughout the series or, better yet, memorized.
On a Staff
Fig.1 shows the notes on a musical staff.
Fig.1
On a Guitar
Fig.2 shows the notes on a guitar.
Fig.2
Rhythm
With regard to rhythm notation, the student will need to know that:
- The two numbers at the beginning of a piece of music are the time signature (fig.3, highlighted in red).
- The top number tells us how many beats are in each measure (the space between the bar lines).
- A 4/4 time signature tells us that there are four beats in each measure.
- The four beats in each measure are represented by four slashes (fig.3, highlighted in blue).
Fig.3
Next Post
The Major Scale.