Alphabetical Names for the Bass Guitar in E

Video Transcript

"RYAN LARSON: So now we're going to go over the actual alphabetical names of each one of the chords. And it's just simply the alphabet from A to G, and then it repeats itself. But we're starting on E today, right? We're on the key of E. So it goes E, F, G, A, B, C, D. And you want to write this down at home, E to D, and you go E, F, G, A, B, C, D. And the key of E has four sharps. You have your F sharp, G sharp, C sharp and D sharp and you want to write that down as well. So you're going to write E, F sharp, G sharp, A, B, C sharp, D sharp. And then above it, you have to write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So when we go through, every time we see an F sharp chord, we know we used the second note out of this scale, or which would be this 9 here on the tab, right? Or if we have an A, we have to use the fourth note, so we got 1, 2, 3, 4. That's the 7 on the 2nd string, 7th fret, 2nd string. So now you can go through and logically find all the roots of all the chords that are going to be thrown at you. Now, say you have a G natural, there's no sharp there, you're going to have to do a flat 3. So if we go 1, 2, 3, that's our 11th fret, right? So if we flat it, we're going to bring it down to the 10th fret, and then you're going to play the route on the 10th fret. And you might have to move your pattern, too, depending on whether it's a major scale or a minor scale, but we'll go over that as we run through the actual pieces that we're going to play today. So that's your major scale, G major, four sharps. And you want to make sure you write all these information down, so then when you go through and read through tunes and E major on your own, you'll be able to reference back and figure everything out."