Bryan Fusilier

All music, no matter the style of genre, is made up of notes. The basic building block of all Western Tonal Music (which is what I’m going to be teaching) is the “note”. Notes make up all the melody’s you’ve ever heard and when they are stacked on top of each other and played at the same time they make up all of the chords and chord progressions that you have ever heard. They are literally the alphabet that the language of music theory is built upon.

Each note has a letter name assigned to it. And it is those letter names that we have to memorize before we can go any further.  The good news is that there are only twelve notes that you have to be familiar with. The better news is that, if you can read this page, you already know the names of seven of those twelve notes.

Here is a little video that will introduce you to the notes and show you how they are named and ordered:

Fast Tube by Casper

So get to know the names of your notes and be able to find them on your particular instrument. From here on out, it will be assumed that you are thoroughly familiar with them.

For you guitar players out there, see my lesson on how to find the names of your notes on your guitar.

Next up: Half-Steps and Whole-Steps