Essential Guitar:

Standard Notation 1

By Tim Hogan

©Tim Hogan Music 2021

 Fundamentals of music notation

Music notation can be broken into two main parts – pitch and rhythm. Pitch describes how high or
low a note or group of notes sound, and rhythm describes the duration of a note, group of notes or
rest.

Let’s start with rhythm

The table below shows our most common note types, their names and their values.

NOTE NAME OTHER NAME VALUE REST (SILENCE)

Semibreve Whole note 4 beats
w
Minim Half note 2 beats
h
Crotchet Quarter note 1 beat
q
Quaver Eighth note Half beat
e
More on Quavers:

Quavers can also be placed on the second half of a beat. In this case there will be a quaver rest on
the beat, with the note on the ‘and’ count.

When a quaver is played on its own, it will look like the one above. When 2 or 4 quavers a played in
a row they are grouped together with a ‘beam’.

Note: quavers can be grouped in 3’s, 5’s and more, but we’ll worry about odd groupings later.

Example with counting

1 &

iq
1 &

iiiq
1 & 2 &

Notes are written on a Staff (also called a Stave). The Staff is made up of five lines and four spaces.
The placement of the note tells you the pitch, which we will look at in the next section.

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 Time Signatures

The time signature tells you how many beats (or pulses) make up one bar of music. Time signatures
have two numbers. The top number tells us how many beats are in a bar, and the bottom number
tells us what note value is used to count each beat.
The top number can be anything, while the bottom number is usually one of the following:

2 - Beats are counted in Minims

4 - Beats are counted in Crotchets
8 - Beats are counted in Quavers

There are 3 types of time signatures - Simple, Compound and Complex. We will start with simple,
and look at compound and complex later.

In Simple time, each beat is subdivided into two. This gives us the and count.
There are 3 groups of simple time signatures. They are:

Simple Duple - 2 beats per bar

Simple Triple - 3 beats per bar
Simple Quadruple - 4 beats per bar

Time signatures are written just once at the beginning of a piece of music, right after the clef. You
won’t see another time signature in the same piece of music unless there is a change in meter
(another word to describe time signatures).

Below are the most common time signatures for simple duple, triple and quadruple.

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 Bars and Barlines

Music is divided into bars by barlines. A bar of music must have notes and rests that add up to the
correct number of beats as indicated by the time signature. Once the correct number of beats is
reached in a bar (with notes and/or rests) a barline is drawn, and a new bar begins. Below are 3
types of barlines:

Single barline - Divides staves into bars

Double barline - Same as single barline, but also indicates the end of a section
Final barline - Indicates the end of a piece of music

There is another type of barline, but we will look at that in the repeats section.

That’s it!
There is a lot more that can be said about rhythm notation, but that is more than enough for us to
get started. Now it’s time to put it all together and play some music. We will start with some rhythm
reading exercises before adding pitch to learn melodies.

How to use the rhythm exercises

Don’t worry about pitch! Play any single note/chord/scale/random selection of notes you like to play
through these rhythms. They are all 4 bar exercises in 4/4 time, and cover most of the rhythms you
are likely to come across using the note values shown on page 1. The goal is not to memorize the
exercises, but to recognise the sound of a rhythm simply by reading it, and to apply it to the guitar.
You can play them as single 4 bar lines, or play all 20 exercises as a continuous piece.

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 Now we have an understanding of rhythm, it’s time to look at pitch
Notes are written on a Staff (also called a Stave). The Staff is made up of five lines and four spaces.
Notes are written either on the lines or in the spaces between the lines. At the beginning of the line
you will see the Clef, which indicates the range of notes.
For guitar music, you will see the Treble Clef - 

Notes are arranged alphabetically starting with E the bottom line, moving from line to space to line
etc. It is a good time to mention that there are only 7 letters in the music alphabet – A, B, C, D, E, F
and G. After G we go back to A and start again.

To make identifying notes quicker and easier we break them into lines and spaces. We use an
acronym to help us remember the notes on the lines, while the spaces spell a word.

Below are these notes shown in both Tablature (TAB) and on a neck diagram. Most of us guitarists
are comfortable reading TAB, but the aim of this book is to make you just as comfortable reading
standard notation. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the note names, locations on the
neck, and their locations on the staff.

Lines:

Spaces:

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 Time to put it all together
Congratulations! You are now ready to combine what you have learned about rhythm and pitch to
play melodies! The first page of exercises will focus on notes on the lines before moving to the
spaces on the next page. Once you are confident with lines and spaces separately we will put them
together for more complex melodies.

TIP: Before jumping into the reading exercises, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the notes
on the fretboard first. Use the TAB and neck diagrams below to practice playing these notes.

One more thing…

These notes are all in first position. This simply means that the finger you use to play the notes
matches the fret number - first fret notes are played with the first finger, second fret notes are
played with the second finger and third fret notes with the third finger. Don’t worry too much if you
don’t always get this right, you will with time.

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 More notation things
You’ve come a long way! Well done! Before we look at any more reading exercises, let’s take a look
at some other notation devices.

Repeat symbols

Most music uses repetition. Rather than writing the same passage of music twice, repeat symbols
can be used to indicate a section of music is to be repeated. The example below shows start and end
repeat symbols indicating that the four bar line is to be played twice.

Sometimes a section is mostly the same, but has a different ending. In this case repeat symbols are
used in conjunction with first and second time endings. These are brackets over the top of bars
indicating which bars are to be omitted on the repeat, and which bar to skip ahead to.

More Notes!
By now you have a good understanding of the notes on the staff, but I’m sure you’ve figured out that
there are more than just 9 notes on the guitar. Let’s extend our notes above the staff to get higher
pitched notes. Notes go up (or down) alphabetically when we move from line to space to line to
space etc. Once we reach F on the top line, we’ve run out of places to put notes.

Notes can, however, continue going up. The next note, G, sits above the staff nicely. Beyond the G,
we need to add extra lines called Ledger lines. A Ledger line is a small line just big enough to fit a
note head. You can add as many ledger lines as you need to get to the note needed.

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 Even More Notes!
What goes up must come down! We can find notes below the staff too. The process for finding notes
below the staff is the same as for notes above, just in reverse.

The Guitar (so far)

Let’s put all the notes we’ve looked at so far together. There are 9 notes in the staff, 6 above the
staff and 7 below. That adds up to 22 notes!

Now we know how to find all these notes, we can start to play some more complex pieces of music.
We will begin with 2 string melodies before working our way up to 6 string finger twisters!

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If you’ve made it this far, WELL DONE! Take a minute to look at what you’ve achieved. You should
now be able to confidently read a wide range of songs in standard notation. This puts you well ahead
of the average guitarist.

Well, since you’ve come this far, you may as well go further. The next section will expand your
knowledge of rhythm and introduce some new notation ideas. Let’s get to it!

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 Let’s go back to Rhythm

You’ve already mastered the most common note values, but what happens when we need an odd
length note? We use dots and ties, of course!

Dots
Dots placed to the right of a note head are used to lengthen a note by half its original value. These
new notes are called dotted notes. Rests can also be dotted. Have a look at the examples below.

Ties
Notes can also be lengthened using ties. A tie is a curved line joining notes of the same pitch. The
note is played ONCE, and rings for the duration of all note values combined. Ties can be used within
a bar, as well as across barlines.

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 Semiquavers
As we learnt in the beginning of the book, note values can be halved to create new notes. This is
called subdividing. We got as far as quavers – half beat notes. These notes can be subdivided
(halved) creating semiquavers – quarter beat notes. Semiquavers are also called 16th notes because
they are a 16th of a whole note. The counting is shown below:

Semiquavers are often combined with quavers to create different rhythms.

There are 2 ways to combine dotted quavers with semiquavers.

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And now with rests.

There are more ways to combine quavers and rests within a beat, but this is a good start.

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 Triplets
Triplets are a group of 3 notes played in the space of 2 notes. The most commonly used triplets are:

Quaver triplets: Three notes in the space of two quavers

Crotchet triplets: Three notes in the space of two crotchets

Semiquaver triplets: Three notes in the space of two semiquavers

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 Swing and shuffle rhythm
The swing rhythm was popularised by 1920's dance music called Swing. The name comes from the
swinging feel of the rhythm. The rhythm is also often associated with jazz and blues music, but is
also used in almost every other style of music. The shuffle rhythm is essentially the same as swing,
but is usually characterised by a strong backbeat. This means beats 2 and 4 are accented.

Now go back to the beginning of the book and play the exercises using the shuffle rhythm.

Advanced Rhythm Exercises

Let’s forget about pitch again for this next set of exercises while we put the dots, ties, semiquavers
and triplets into practice. Just like with the other rhythm exercises, play any single
note/chord/scale/random selection of notes you like to play through these rhythms.

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Congratulations! You’ve made it through all of the playing exercises in the book. Now that you are
officially a music reader, you won’t be restricted to only reading TAB.

Now we will learn some other common notation devices.

Dynamics
In simple terms, dynamics tell you how loud or soft to play. Dynamics can add an emotional element
to the music. The chart below shows dynamics from quiet to loud. They get written below the staff,
and apply to the whole piece or until another dynamic is written.

Sign Term
pp pianissimo Very quiet
p Piano Quiet
mp Mezzo piano Moderately quiet
mf Mezzo forte Moderately loud
f Forte Loud
ff Fortissimo Very loud

There are also dynamics that apply to individual notes. They are written above or below the note
head. The most common ones are:

1. Accent – note is played with a strong emphasis.

2. Staccato – note is played short and detached from the following note. For example, a
staccato crotchet should be played as a quaver followed by a quaver rest.
3. Marcato – this is a combination of Accent and Staccato.
4. Tenuto – this is the opposite of staccato. It tells you to make sure the note rings for its full
value

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Score Navigation

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 That’s it!
You’ve reached the end! What a great accomplishment! Keep the momentum going – avoid TAB
wherever you can. By doing this not only will you continue to improve as a reader, but your
knowledge of the neck will get better and better.

But as important as reading music is, it is not everything. You need to listen to as much music as you
can from a wide range of genres. Below I have listed some guitarists that you may not have heard of
who are definitely worth checking out.

Lionel Loueke Molly Miller

Julian Lage Mark Lettieri
Lari Basilio Bill Frisell
Alex Machacek Frank Zappa
Andy McKee Guthrie Govan
Gretchen Menn Orianthi
Pat Metheny Gilad Hekselman
Chris Eldridge Scott Henderson
Kaki King Bob Lanzetti
John Scofield Yvette Young
George Benson Oz Noy
Prince Cory Wong
Wayne Krantz Derek Trucks
Charlie Hunter Chris McQueen

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