So far all your playing has been on naturals and as you know there is a range of sharps and flats to think about as well.? As your musical ability advances you will want to play these notes as they appear in popular music.?
Your fret board is set out in half tones or semitones as they are called
The sharp sign is written like this:?
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Whenever this appears, it tells you to play the fret position immediately up from the natural.
The note in the following diagram is C.? As it is written here it is the C one octave up from middle C.? It is the 2nd string, first fret.? If the note is to be sharpened to conform to the tune, it would be marked in the way shown and is now known as C sharp and is played on the fret position immediately up from C.? That is the 2nd string, second fret
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Play the note C written in the first part of the diagram.? Then refer to the second part, where the appearance of the sharp sign tells you that the note is no longer C natural but has become C sharp.? To sharpen a note you play the next fret immediately up, ?Any note can be sharpened in this manner.?
When speaking of sharps and flats we say A sharp, or C sharp etc., not sharp A or sharp C.
In written music the sharp or flat sign is always shown before the note, not after it, as illustrated in the previous example.
There is nothing confusing about sharps if you simply remember that whenever the sharp sign occurs, you simply play the next fret immediately up from the note affected.?
If you were to see the note written on the 4th line of the treble stave, you would know that this was a D natural.? 3rd fret, 2nd string. If a sharp sign appeared before it, it would automatically become D sharp and if you look at your fret board chart you see that it is not indicated as D# but E flat. You would know that it was the next fret position separating? the notes D and E and whether it is referred to as D# or E flat makes no difference because the 2 are the same.? The use of a sharp sign or a flat sign is up to the composer and depends in the main what key the piece has been written in. Don't let this confuse you because it really is very simple. A half tone is one fret position up from the natural if it is indicated as a # and one fret position down from the natural if it is indicated as a flat.
The sharpened note is half a tone up from the natural note.? C sharp is half way between C natural and D natural in sound and is therefore called a SEMI-TONE.? A semi-tone is half of a full tone.? There will be a full explanation on semi-tones later, when you reach the stage of forming chords for a vast improvement in the sound of your playing.
