Natural Notes

The term Natural in music refers to any note that is only a letter with no extra symbol to indicate sharps (#) or flats (b). These notes go up alphabetically from A to G and then start over at A again, giving us A, B, C, D, E, F and G. On the guitar, the distance between each of these notes will be referred to as either a whole step or a half step. The general term for the distance between notes is interval.

Whole Step

On the guitar, a whole step is two frets from one note to another. Whole steps can go either up or down. An example of a whole step up is from the 5th fret to the 7th fret of the same string. An example of a whole step down is going from the 7th fret to the 5th fret of the same string. The diagram below shows a whole step from the 5th fret of the low E (6th) string to the 7th fret of the low E (6th) string.

Half Step

On the guitar, a half step moves up to the next fret or down to the previous fret on the same string. If you're going a half step up from the 7th fret, you will end up on the 8th fret. If you're going a half step down from the 7th fret, you will end up on the 8th fret. The diagram below demonstrates this on the low E (6th) string.

The distance between any two natural notes will be whole steps (two frets away), except between B and C and between E and F, which will be half steps (one fret away). These are the intervals we end up with:

A to B - whole step

B to C - half step

C to D - whole step

D to E - whole step

E to F - half step

F to G - whole step

G to A - whole step

The easiest place to see these intervals is on the A (5th) string. The diagram below shows all these notes placed down on the fretboard starting from the open A note of the A string.

If you go back to the , you can see that the distance between any two notes stays the same no matter what register the note is in (higher or lower on the fret board). As long as it's the same two letters, the distance between the two remains the same.

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