Bassists Guide to the Musical Alphabet
The musical alphabet is an effective tool for identifying musical notes, in much the same way that saying the word “red” identifies the color without having to show something red to get the point across. All instruments use the exact same twelve notes, which makes this a useful way of expression beyond using fret tab numbers (which only work for a particular tuning and are meaningless for instruments that don’t use fretting to create notes), at least in terms of conventional Western music theory. Saying ‘E’ string, third fret is going to be meaningless to a singer, but saying ‘G’ will identify the note right away.
Basics of the Musical Alphabet
One thing to bear in mind is that there are 12 notes within the octave, but the letters A through G used only equals 7 notes. This is because the musical alphabet is based off the C major scale, which means every natural note is used in the scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B).
As odd as it may seem, C not A is traditionally the starting point of each octave of notes. All the notes are a full step apart except for E-F and B-C which are half-steps. The octave in terms of steps is shown below and repeats up and down the octaves.
[C] [ ] [D] [ ] [E] [F] [ ] [G] [ ] [A] [ ] [B] [C]
If you fully examine the C major bass scale, each of these notes are played in succession. The gaps representing accidental notes would not be touched, but the naming system is based off the C Major scale, which means that scale and the corresponding A Minor scale use only the natural notes.
Accidental Notes
Of course, there are still 5 more notes that need to be named, and while C Major and A Minor don’t use those notes, most every other scale not derived specifically from those will have at least one. These notes are either referred to as the sharp or flat version of an adjacent note. Sharp (#) means a half step up in pitch from the natural note, and flat (b) means a half step down in pitch. So the note between C and D is a half step in pitch higher than C and a half step lower than D, meaning that note could be referred to as C# or Db. This holds true for all the notes, meaning the full musical alphabet over each octave becomes:
[C] [C# / Db] [D] [D# / Eb] [E] [F] [F# / Gb] [G] [G# / Ab] [A] [A# / Bb] [B] [C]
Technically, there are actual reasons for selecting whether to use C# or Db to name that note, but since most use of this system is simply to be able to communicate clearly, they are usually fundamentally interchangeable. In much more formal musical settings it can be more important, but that has more to do with the fact those situations are also communicating theoretical compositional aspects as well as the particular note.
Unless you are learning very stringent, high end musical theory composition, it isn’t anything to worry about. It is basically the difference between practical bass guitar lessons for an instrumentalist and music theory lessons for a composer. Taking the time to learn to effectively use this system makes communicating with other musicians very easy, quick, and clear.
