🎸 Pitch notation might seem like a piano player’s thing — but for guitarists, it’s a secret weapon for fretboard clarity and communication.
In this video, we break down pitch notation and show how each note gets its octave label (like E2 or C4). Using our guitar fretboard as the visual guide, we explore how pitch is mapped relative to the piano keyboard — giving you an easy way to reference, understand, and apply octaves across the neck.
You'll see why the guitar starts at the 2nd octave, why we don’t access the 0th or 1st, and how this shapes how we navigate, understand, and play the guitar.
🔹 What You’ll Learn:
- What pitch notation is and how it works
- How octave labels are derived using the piano as a reference
- Why the guitar begins at the 2nd octave (E2)
- How pitch awareness sharpens your tuning, note recognition, and musical collaboration
This lesson builds on our previous topic of voicings and lays essential groundwork for our next video on voice leading, helping you move more musically and intentionally across the fretboard.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:48 Why Pitch
1:48 What is Pitch
4:10 The Real Octave
9:14 Guitar Staff
13:31 Fret Octaves
22:00 Close out