Notes on the Venezuelan cuatro fretboard

In the Musical Notes de la página de Theory page we saw that Western music, which we will deal with exclusively in these pages, uses the twelve notes of the chromatic scale; therefore, in order to achieve dexterity in the execution of known melodies or the creation of new melodies in the cuatro you need a complete familiarization with the location of these notes on its fingerboard. This is something that will take some time, but since in theory we use the major C scale to illustrate the creation of scales and chords, let's begin by identifying a first location of this scale on the ukulele fingerboard. This is something that will take some time, but that will be facilitated and strengthened through practice of scales and chords.

Below is the location of the notes, and their corresponding hours in the clock analogy, on the fourteen frets of a standard cuatro:

As we will see in the section that follows the following observations and deals with the determination of notes and frets on the fretboard, for some tasks it is simpler to use this second alternative.

Note that:

• As explained on the Musical Notes section of theTheory page, notes separated by an octave belong to the same class and are given the same name; therefore, the notes on the 12th fret are the same as those on open strings but one octave higher. For an instrument with more than twelve frets the notes of frets 13, 14, 15, ...will be the same as for frets 1, 2, 3, ..., respectively.
• Due to the re-entering tuning of the four, in which the first string is lower than the second and the third, strings 2 to 4 contain all the notes available in this instrument; therefore in these pages the fingerings of scales will be shown on these last three strings. In the previous figure the rectangle located above and to the left contains the notes of the A major scale on the interval that goes from A3 to A4.
• The fingering of some three-note chords will be simplified if the first string is used; in addition,four-note chords can only be played using this string. In the diagram the location of notes B3, C4, D4and E4 of the previous scale on the first string has been added, so that the natural notes on the first five frets of the four can be memorized.
• The only possible fingering of notes A # 4 to G # 5 is on the second string, so the elongated vertical rectangle that encompasses these notes on the second string has been added.
• The notes in the two blocks on the left allow you to interpret any melody that is within the register of a cuatro with fourteen frets, notes A3 to G#5.
• It is convenient to memorize the different locations of note C on the fretboard of the four, so they are all shaded in the previous figure. For this memorization your knowledge of the way in which this instrument is tuned will help you.

Notes of the cuatro on the music staff

Since the most complete notation used for the transcription of melodies is the standard (classical) notation, it is convenient to know the arrangement of the notes of the cuatro on the music staff:

The Arabic numerals that are located a little below and to the right of the notes correspond to the nomenclature that we will use in these pages to indicate the fingering of the notes: the first digit identifies the string on which the note is fingered and the next digit(s) corresponds to the fret. For example: the fingerings indicated for note G4 are 410, 35, 21, 18, which can be verified in the diagram of the fretboard of the previous figure.

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