238658923659

Chapter 3: Grab Hold, Tune Up, Play On!
51
Figure 3-5:
With fingers
curved and
knuckles
bent, the left
hand fingers
the E chord.
Music Notation: Not Just for Geeks
You don’t have to read music to play the blues. In fact, most of today’s great
blues artists don’t read music at all or can’t read it well enough to make an
impact on their playing. So, you ask, why bother with notation? Because it
can make learning more efficient. And it’s not going to take away from your
ability to play (although some superstition exists in this regard). The following
sections introduce you to the music notation used in this book.
Guidance for your aimless
fingers: A chord diagram
A chord diagram (shown in Figure 3-6) represents the strings and frets of the
guitar as a grid of six vertical lines for the strings and five horizontal lines for
the frets. Dots on the horizontal lines indicate where your fingers go. Reading
a chord diagram isn’t like reading at all. It’s more like looking at a map and
giving your fingers the directions. A chord diagram has a certain anatomy,
and the following list defines each of its elements:
TEAM LinG