Central to the melodic and harmonic components of the Western music system is the chromatic scale, a collection of 12 musical pitches cool notes, you could think of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale as being like the musical alphabet. Just like we write lines of literature with the English alphabet. We use the musical alphabet, the chromatic scale to write our melodies and build our chords. As hard as it may be to believe every single melody and chord you've ever heard has drawn from just this collection of 12 basic notes. We give a name to each of these nodes so that we can identify them easily. Firstly, let's take a look at three musical symbols which are used to describe the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, natural sharp and flat of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale there are seven that we call natural note.

We will look at those first. The natural notes of the chromatic scale or a B C, D, E, F and G. After the note G, you would arrive back at a again, we could write them as a natural, B natural, C natural, etc. But if we just write the letter name without the natural sign, the natural is implied. If you look at a piano keyboard, all the white keys are the natural notes. For an example of a natural note on your guitar fretboard, play the fifth fret on your Eastern that's the natural note eight. Now if you play the seventh fret on your E string, that's the natural note B.

Now let's deal with the sharp notes. In music, the word sharp denotes the raising of a pitches frequency. In other words, when a sound gets higher pitched, you could say that it's getting sharper. As a practical example, if we play the note a on our E strings fifth fret, and then play the note on the sixth fret. We can hear how the six Load sounds higher or sharper than the load a on the fifth fret. The name of the note on your E string sixth fret is a sharp.

In the Western theory of music, there is a sharp note after each of the natural notes except after B, and after e like so. A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G and G sharp. After the no G sharp, you would arrive back at the node A again. This is easy to visualize if you look at a piano keyboard, the black keys on a piano are designated to the sharp notes. Now if we count the natural and the sharp notes together, we already have the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. So you're probably wondering how the flat notes fit into the picture.

In music, the word flat denotes the lowering of pitches frequency. In other words, just the opposite of what the word sharp means. Once again, let's take a practical example so that you can hear this in action. If we play the natural B again on the E string, seventh fret and then play the note on the E string sixth fret. You should be able to hear that the second note sounds lower or flatter, and then it would be on the seventh fret. The name of the note on the E string sixth fret is B flat.

Now, here comes the curveball because we just said that the note on your E string sixth fret was a sharp, so why are we now calling it B flat? You see the sharp notes also have a flat name like so. A sharp can also be called B flat. C sharp can also be called D flat. D sharp can also be called E flat. F sharp can also be called G flat, and G sharp can also be called a flat.

This is the point that often confuses beginner musicians. In music theory these notes that can go by two names are known as in harmonic equivalence. So the notes of the chromatic scale could be written either with natural notes and sharp notes as before. Or it can be written with natural notes and flat notes like this. You'd never see sharp notes and flat notes together, you'd pick either sharps or flats to represent the end harmonic equivalence. Now, a very important point is that even though these n harmonic equivalent notes go by two names, they share the same pitch.

In other words, a sharp and B flat sound exactly the same. Once again, if we play the note on the E string, sixth fret, we can hear that it has one pitch, even though it has two names. A great way to visualize these in harmonic equivalent notes is to look at the piano keyboard again, notice that all the black keys are the sharp and flat modes, and they fall in between the natural notes. Now all of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale can be played on every string of guitars, fretboard It's really easy to do once you know how I've put together a short PDF that shows you how to do just this, which you can download at the end of the section. Next, we're going to apply what we've just learned in practice by writing out the natural sharp and flat symbols, as well as the 12 notes of the chromatic scale with it's in harmonic equivalence.