Half Steps and Whole Steps:
No, we are not talking about walking here. We are talking about distances between notes on the guitar. They are also known as intervals. But I prefer to use the terms half steps and whole steps, because it is less confusing.
Also do not get these terms confused with Whole Notes and Half Notes. We are talking about something completely different here.
Half Step or 1/2 Step:
A half step is the distance from one fret on the to the next higher fret. For instance going from a note placed on the first string first fret to the first string second fret is known as 1/2 step apart. Another 1/2 Step would be from an open string to the first fret.
Whole Step or 1 Step:
This would be…..you guessed it, the distance from one fret to a fret two frets higher. In other words there is a fret between these two note or as we call it, we skip a fret. The Whole Step is also know as 1 Step. Another Whole Step or 1 Step would be from an open string to a note on the 2nd fret, and we skip over the first fret.
Let’s Relate This To Notes Now:
In the diagram above, we start with the C note on the 3rd fret of the fifth string. Go ahead and play all of these notes in this octave. The would be called out as C D E F G A B C.
Read this carefully. Notice that from the first C to the D we go from the 3rd fret on the 5th string to the open 4th string to play the D? This same D could also be played on the 5th fret of the fifth string (yes it is exactly the same note, just played in a different location). So actually going from C to D, we travel 2 frets, because we skip the 4th fret and go to the fifth. Since we go 2 frets this is called a…..Yep a Whole Step.
Let’s look at another one. The 2nd note in the scale is a D. The easiest location to play that note would be the 4th string open. The next note in the scale would be an E. From the open D to the E on the 2nd Fret would be 1 Step or a Whole Step.
Here Comes the Half Step:
Now it becomes a bit different. To the next note or an F from the E is only 1 Fret or a Half Step. Hey what happened? We still only moved from on letter to the next didn’t we? Yep that is how scales are set up. In one octave say from the C to the next C there are (2) Half steps and (5) Whole Steps.
Can you find the other Half Step? Look at the fingerboard diagram above and see if you can figure it out.
If you guessed from the B to the C would be a Half Step, you would be right. So This is the pattern that we have in a scale. between each set of 2 notes: C (1) D (1) E (1/2) F (1) G (1) A (1) B (1/2) C.
Now we will take out the notes and the pattern remains: 1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2. We will have this same pattern of Whole and Half Steps between any scale, no matter what it is. We will clarify that in a later lesson.
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