Music Theory: Notes

On a fretless instrument, your finger can land anywhere along the string, allowing you to slide through the pitches between two locations. A fretted guitar or bass divides the string into fixed positions. Each fret gives you one specific pitch—one note. Fretless bassists can use those same locations as reference positions.

A note is a named pitch.

Notes are the basic building blocks of music. They’re kind of like colors in a painting. You can use a single color (note) to create part of a painting. Or you can combine colors (ie. notes) to make new colors (chords – multiple notes played at the same time).

One difference between art and music

You don’t really need to know the names of colors to create a beautiful painting. But knowing the names of notes and where they are on your instrument gives you a reliable way to find, describe, and reuse musical ideas.