Visual Guitar TM :: Guitar, Guitar Scales, Modes, Strings, Fretboard |
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C Major | C# Major | Db Major | D Major | D# Major | Eb Major | E Major | F Major | F# Major | Gb Major | G Major | G# Major | AbMajor | A Major | A# Major | Bb Major | B Major |
Sound and light are both examples of wave phenomena. Sound is what you perceive when a vibrating body sets in motion the air molecules around it, which propogate the energy away from the source like ripples in water. Light waves are electromagnetic energy that you perceive as colors. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves also, but are not visible to humans. In fact, light is just a small range of the total electromagnetic spectrum.
Every type of wave has a frequency and a wavelength. Frequency is the rate of vibration. A body that is vibrating at 200 times a second is higher in frequency than a body vibrating at 100 times per second. Wavelength is the distance from one peak of a wave to the next. A high frequency wave has a short wavelength, while a low frequency wave has a long wavelength. When we perceive colors, red is lower in frequency (long wavelength) while blue is higher in frequency (short wavelength). Pitch is what we perceive of different sound frequencies. It is similar to color in that it helps us make sense of the world around us. Can you imagine a colorless world?
To add important visual clues to the study of the guitar, this book follows the natural order of colors of the rainbow. Red Root notes are relatively lower in pitch (and therefore frequency), while Blue Root Notes are relatively higher in pitch. In the illustration below for instance, yellow is higher in pitch than orange, but less than green.
