Why Guitar Music Does Not Fit Into The Staff
Have you ever tried to read sheet music written for guitar?
If you’re anything like most guitar players, the answer is probably a pretty resounding ‘no’. Why read sheet music when tabs are right there?
But, if you have lost your way as a guitarist and succumbed to the lures of standard notation, you may have stumbled immediately on the most obvious problem:
Which C on the guitar is the middle C on the score?
And if you spent just a little time thinking about it, you have also noticed a problem with the range of the staff music is written on, and the range of the guitar:
Generally speaking, music for the guitar is written on one staff only.
For comparison, on piano it’s written across two staffs, one treble clef and one bass clef. For guitar we use only the treble staff.
But if you are reading music written on treble clef and playing it on the guitar, you’ll start running into some problems pretty quickly.
The problem is that the range of the guitar does not fit neatly into treble - or the bass clef!
If you were a nerd like me you could use the alto clef - but no one uses the alto clef (*) (or at least admits using it...) and it’s generally best to pretend it just doesn’t exist...
So what do you have to do? How do we make the range of the guitar fit neatly into treble clef?
That’s exactly what I’ll be sharing with you in the video below. Check it out and see how to read and write sheet music for the guitar.
(*) Well, nobody except violists (the people who play violas). And they are mercilessly teased from all the other musicians in the orchestra for this.
If you want to be able to read sheet music as a guitar player, it will be incredibly helpful for you to fully understand scales, modes, and all of their positions first - it will be easier to learn to read afterwards. If you want to be a master of scales and modes on the guitar, check out my Master of the Modes guitar course.
Video Transcription
Hello Internet, so nice to see you. I have a great question about the middle C on guitar If my ear is correct and the middle C is the third fret of the fifth string Then there would only be two middle C's on the guitar fretboard I think so which one is the middle C we know that we can play several C's on the guitar I can play a C here and I can play a C here.
And those are the same C note But I can also play a C here, which is like this, which is like this But it's a different octave and I can play a C here, which is the same as here, which is different octaves And if I had one fret extra Actually, no, I can play a C here.
Oops, I have a C here too, okay One of those is middle C. By the way middle C in American central C in some European language, so just we know what you're talking about Okay, but whenever I say middle C in this case, I mean if you have a score Okay, and I have The G clef Middle C is this one here Okay, I'll just we know what we're talking about.
What is this note on the guitar? I would like to give you a straight answer But the reality is that it depends and you see in a moment That it depends because there's a very good reason about that So the distinction is this if this is a score for another Instrument and not guitar and the middle C will be the C on the first fret on the second string So this note is this If this is a score for guitar Okay, this is written guitar here.
Okay, and it's a score for classical guitar Let's say then this note here. It's this Why we are doing this absurd thing it's a matter of the range of the guitar C it's a matter of the range of the guitar in concert pitch concert pitch means that this note is exactly what it's written that the sound written down period okay it's not transposed okay this is this if you play on a piano the middle C it will sound like this note here.
If we were to adopt this convention for the guitar and put the middle C here we start to have problems in transcribing pieces for the guitar why because everything that is here or above will be on the treble clef okay now a classical guitar will get up to this E here and this E will be this this is this note here it's first finger Well, that's right, this will be the top range of a classical guitar.
But if we go down, there's a lot more range here, okay? And so if this is this, this C here will be here. And then I have to go down a bit more, B -A -G -F -E, and the lowest E will be this. I don't know you guys, but I don't really want to read 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ledger lines under the score whenever I'm playing a piece and sight reading it.
Because it's a bit hard to read this stuff in real time. So you don't really want the range of the guitar to be more than half outside. Of course, we could do something different. We could say, okay, screw it, okay?
We don't use the treble clef, we use the bass clef. Fantastic, so if you use the bass clef, we still have our five lines. Now I have this, and now the middle C is this one here, just one of all. Okay, so that's the C just below, and the E will be here.
That's fantastic, because we are inside this. But if I go up, okay? And I have that the first C will be, this C will be here, and then I need to go up. See, and that's my E. And again, there's a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ledger lines.
It's not dramatic, but honestly, 5 ledger lines on a bass clef. It's kind of ridiculous, so we can find another solution. We're going to use a different clef. We're going to put this, and we're going to use the C clef.
Okay, now middle C is this one. see in this clef is here, okay? That looks a little bit better, right? And the range is pretty good because then, okay, the low C is here, so when I go down a bit more, C, G, A, G, F, the low E is here, not fantastically optimal, I mean it's still a few ledger lines, but it's okay, and the C is here, and the top E is here, so now the range looks better.
I have a little on the bottom, a little on the top, okay, and most of my work happens here anyway. The problem is, who in the 21st century wants to use the C clef? Okay, that's the problem, I mean, it's not great, very few people I know the C clef.
The C clef is fantastic, if you know it, solves a lot of problems like this. But really, if I present this to any guitar player already, I don't want to learn how to read. I mean, you also given that, it's not gonna work.
So, what we're gonna do instead is this. We go back, we use the treble clef, which is the most known one anyway. But we just stipulate that every sound written here is to sound an octave lower. Whenever I write this, which is a C, I actually mean that you have to play the C an octave below.
Okay, it's a transposing clef, no more, no less, okay? This happens for a number of other instruments, okay? If you sing in a choir, tenors have this. They have all the notes in a treble clef, but they actually sound an octave lower than the real pitch, okay?
If you play bass or double bass, if you play a bassoon, if you play, no, no, not a bassoon, no. Double bassoon, if you play other instruments, they are an octave below. Other instruments have an even stranger transposition, because it makes sense for the fingering of the instrument and stuff.
And I don't want to cover this right now, because it's very complex. But, on the guitar, so, if the score is specific for the guitar, then what you write here, the middle C written, it's actually one of the below real middle C, and this is the real middle C.
Now, the range of the guitar goes from this, which is the lowest E, okay? And, of course, we need to get quite a bit higher here. That's now this C here, so that's, this E here is the open string, so one octave above is this.
Okay, so now we go here. So now, this is the range of the guitar. We have only three ledger lines on top and three ledger lines on the bottom. It's balanced, so this thing now fits the range of the guitar.
And so it's much easier to put all the music in a single score, as opposed to have, like, the piano two scores, okay, like the treble and the bass clef, etc. Okay, so you have only one system of five strings.
That's why we do it. Here's the thing. Again, if the score you're reading, it's a score for guitar, it's a piece for guitar, specifically written for guitar, then what you read here is middle C, it's on the fifth string, third fret, and everything else follows.
If you're reading a score from any other instruments, violin, viola, cello, okay, etc., as long as they're not transposing themselves, okay, flute, etc., okay, then the middle C is actually, the note is not here, first fret of the second string.
It's a bit of a complex situation, but this complexity is there to help us read the score if you want to read the score. If you don't want to read the score, no problem, you can still do a lot of things on the guitar without reading, and I don't really recommend people to start learn to read it.
Unless they really need it, for some specific thing, but since we have a question, that's where you'll find Middle C on a guitar. This is Tommaso Zillio for musictheoryforguitar.com, and until next time, enjoy!