random guitar questions

I'm pretty new to playing guitar so try to bear with my ignorance. My first question is suppose I'm looking at some TAB and it has two notes being played at the same time that are on different strings like:

----------------
-----0----------
----------------
----------------
-----2----------
----------------

I know for fingerpicked songs on acoustic guitar you'd just play both those notes with different fingers, but what if there's something like that on an electric song? Do you play with your fingers? one with the pick and pluck the other? or do you try mute the strings in between and strum all four strings?

Next question is let's say you've got some particular note like the open A string (in standard tuning), now I know at the 12th fret on the same string you're back to an A but it's up an octave. Now the E string played at the 5th fret is also an A right, but is it the same note as the open A or is it up or down an octave? Obviously the pitches increase as you go down a particular string, but how do the notes on different strings compare to each other?

Anyway, that's all, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Evan

I guess if you just know that the strings are 5 (or 4 for G to B) steps apart you can track where the different octaves are. By my reasoning then the small E string is two octaves above the big E is that right? If you go backwards from the little E (5 frets at a time) you'd get the same note at the 24th fret on the big E string which would be two octaves from open?

sorry to be a bother but I've never really thought about a lot of this stuff before and it's pretty cool to finally understand how some of this stuff works.

Sure, you can look at it that way.

I remember when I was about 13 or so, my guitar teacher had me take some graph paper and plot out all the notes on all strings.. At first I though it was a real pian in the ass, buut after doing it and then taking some time to look at it, I had a real good view of how and where all the notes fit together on the fretboard... Give it a try....



e f f# g......
b c c# d......
g g# a a#....
d d# e f......
a a# b c......
E f f# g.......

Okay here's another tab question, what does something like this:


----4>(6)====(6)=2----- mean? (can you tell which song I'm looking at?)

Does that mean bend 4 to 6, hold it and then play 2? I think this just comes down to bad notation for this particular piece (and no definitions given for the notation)

This is confusing because later there's this:

---9>10>9>7----

which means what, 9 bend to 10 then release back to 9, then bend *down* to 7 which you can't do. Or was it 7 all along being bent to 9 then 10, etc.

(yeah so I'm looking at the Time tab)

anyway, hope this isn't too tedius for you experts to bother with.

A guitar with 24 frets will have 4 full octaves, (5 different E pitches, one on each end). All other notes will have fewer -- three full octaves and change.

As far as the notation, I would guess it's bending 4 up a whole tone to 6, holding it, then sliding down to 2. As you noted, you can't bend down. Bending beyond a whole tone is tough. At least for me because I'm a wuss.

Thats something i should do, but heck, its a major pain the ass..

great advice, a firm knowledge of the fretboard and notes is essential to a quality player

Got slapped in the face by a broken E string? I know it happened to me once. Ouch.

Ouch indeed.

Something kind of interesting...if you position your fingers for an augmented chord on the 1st three (e, B, G) strings....say, C+ for example, which would be like this:

e----4
B----5
G----5
D----X
A----X
E----X

moving any finger a half-tone flat will form a major chord, moving any finger a half-tone sharp will form a minor chord. A good way for beginners to keep in mind the 3 basic major and minor shapes on the 1st three strings.

David, The part where your bending the 9 10 9 7, you are indeed bending from the 7th, it can be tricky though, gilmour uses alot of tricky bends, like the one from the another brick in the wall solo, thats a mad bend, great sound though, any other questions email me

Redhouse1985@yahoo.com

thanks for all the response, i'm currently on a "i'll never be able to play and it's all hopeless" kick but when I come back around I'm sure I'll have some more questions.

Evan

Hey, I remember that when I started playing guitar I was basically "fogwalking" most of the time until I found two other guys who were also beginners and we started exchanging our limited knowledges. Anyway, one of the things I did at first was playing arpeggios with just the first three strings because it was easier to work out the basic chord shapes. Then I moved to arpeggios with the first four strings until I finally could work with all the six strings. No one told me to do so, it was a rather intuitive act, but it helped me start having fun playing songs which otherwise would have been rather complicated for a beginner to play with all the six strings.

I have a couple more small questions mainly about the notation for bends in tab.

1. I see stuff like 7^ and 7b in the same song are those probably half and full bends respectively?
2. I know 7br means bend and release so if there's something like
7b 7b 7b that means don't release and just hold the bent note and strike it multiple times?

Thanks again.