A short instructional YouTube video by Lauren Bateman that teaches the musical alphabet: the seven letter names A–G, how they map to the 12 chromatic notes using piano white and black keys, the concept of octaves, and the equivalence of sharps and flats (enharmonic notes). The video explains why letters appear in chord names and briefly points viewers to a follow-up lesson on basic guitar chords.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, we're going to be going over the musical Alphabet today. And the reason it's important to learn the musical Alphabet is it is the language of music. So when I say, hey, this is a D chord, this is an E chord, this is an A chord, some of that stuff's going to make a little bit more sense to you. So the musical Alphabet is very similar to the English language, okay? We have the letters A, B, C, D, E, F and G. The only difference is we stop at G. All right? So we don't have all those other letters, but there are 12 notes in music. So we have seven letters total, but 12 notes. And it's easier to see on a piano because the piano is very linear compared to a guitar. So on a piano, you would have the white keys. And the white keys are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And then it repeats. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And again A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And it does that eight times. The piano, because the piano has eight octaves, I believe, and an octave is a full set of those letters A through G. Okay? That's a full octave. And then it repeats, and then it repeats. And that's why pianos are nice, because they're very linear. The guitar has an X and Y axis, so it makes it a little bit more difficult. And that's where we get the names of some of these chords. So an A chord, a C chord. So you could guess that an A chord is going to have one of those A notes in it. So C chord's probably going to have one of those C notes in it. And the G chord is probably going to have one of those G notes in it. If you made that assumption, you are 100% correct. Now, those are what we call the natural notes, okay? So all the white keys on the piano. Now, on the piano, there's also black keys, all right? And those will either be sharps, which look like a hashtag, okay, or flats, which look like a little B. All right? And the way you can remember the difference is think of a flat tire. Okay? So flat tire, things get lower, and sharp means things move higher. So if I had an A note on the piano, and I look at the next key, it's going to be a black key, so that's going to be A sharp, okay? We're moving up the piano A sharp, Then the next note would be B. Okay? There is no white key between B and C on the piano. So your next note is going to be C, but there is a C sharp, and then there's D, and then there's D sharp. And again, E and F have no black key. So it's E, F, then it's F sharp, G, then G sharp, and then we're back to A. So those are all the 12 notes of the musical Alphabet. So A, A sharp, B, C, C, C sharp, D. D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp. Now you're probably saying, Lauren, you used all sharps. Where are the flats? So the flats will depend on what key you're in. And they're a little bit interchangeable. So I call them identical twins with just different names. But we're going to move in a different direction now. We're going to go from. Instead of going from low notes to high notes, we're going to move high notes to low notes. And we're going to start on A, and we're going to move backwards to A flat. So we've lowered our note one, so now we have A flat, a lowered note, and B. Four, A is G. And then the black key would be G flat. Okay? And then G flat would go to F. There is no F flat. You go to E, and then there is E flat. Then you go to D, then you go to D flat, then you go to C. Then you go. There is no black key between C and B. So it's B. There is no C flat. Then you have B flat. And then we're back to A. And then the whole cycle starts again. So you can see they're kind of interchangeable. So basically, A sharp and B flat are the same note on the piano. And that's why I tell people it's like Steve, okay, You can either spell Steve or Steven. S, T, E, V, E, N. Or you could spell it S, T, E, P, H, E, N. So I just tell people they're identical twins with different names. Because if you play that black key above A, it's. And you call it A sharp, and someone else calls it B flat. They're pretty much the same note. There's no difference in the sound. So that's where we get the 12 different notes of the musical Alphabet. So when you see chords on a piano or on a guitar or anything, you're going to notice letters. And those letters are related to the musical Alphabet in the notes. Now, all of these chords are made up of multiple notes, and it's different relationships, and we're not going to get into that in this video. What I wanted you to understand was the basics of the musical Alphabet. And if you're interested in learning your first chords on guitar, I would highly recommend go watching this video over here. Right. Going to teach you the first four chords you should learn on the guitar to start playing thousands of songs today.
