by Pauline & Hannah
Hello,
My granddaughter Hannah 12-y.o. is very keen to learn the guitar - she has an electric and an acoustic guitar, and also a ukulele.
I have a little knowledge of the piano but although I am trying to help her I cannot get any information which will coordinate the sheet music we have between the piano and the guitars. Can you suggest anything please.
Recently we tried to marry up the notes on the piano e.g. C.D.A etc to the guitar notes; but what on earth is a short C? C and G seem to be alright with both instruments but A minor sounded a bit flat and E was not too bad with the short C.
I am sure that you will laugh at our feeble efforts and would be so happy if you could show us the way to combining the two instruments by recommending a site. Sincerely Pauline
Dana:
Pauline, I'm not certain what it is you are asking. Are you saying, how can you match the WRITTEN notes on piano sheet music to the notes plucked on the open & fretted guitar strings? If that is your question, then look at my page called Piano Tablature/Guitar Tablature. It has 2 charts on it that show a one-to-one correspondence between treble clef notes such as the piano and most melody instruments use, and the strings & frets of the guitar.
Are you asking how do you match the KEYS on the piano to the notes found on the guitar? That is harder, because music written for the guitar, when transferred to the treble clef, is written as if it sounds up an octave (8 notes higher). So when you pluck string 1, the high E, on the treble clef it looks like the note is very high. But in actuality, the sound is only 2 steps higher than Middle C on the piano.
But it sounds to me like you are speaking of CHORDS... I have never heard of a "short C" -- perhaps you are talking about a small 3-string version of the usual C chord, which uses 5 or 6 strings? There are lots of websites out there about tuning a guitar, and surely many Youtube videos -- you just need to keep hunting until something makes sense to you.
Hope I answered your question -- write back if you have any more!
Good luck, Dana