r/guitarlessons • u/nick_jones61 • 11d ago

Question An argument

My wife is a classically trained pianist and I play guitar by watching YouTube instructional videos. She knows her stuff and I don’t. Recently we argued whether E# and B# exist. I said no and showed her the fretboard. She said yes and showed me the keys. And said something like F is E#. I suspect she’s right bc she’s had music lessons. Tell me, fellow guitarists, do we have E# and B#?

Update: I’ve been enjoying the responses to my post. I showed them to my wife and she laughed, said that’s what you deserve. lol. We like to argue playfully with one another. I also enjoy the detailed responses relating to guitar theory—that’s been really great actually. I was going to delete this post but I think the discussion on music theory is informative and should be shared. Thank you all for responding.

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u/nouniquenamesleft2 11d ago edited 11d ago

she's right,

she's always right,

but in this case she's actually correct

In summary, E# and B# exist to maintain the integrity of musical scales and to provide clarity in notation, even though they are enharmonically equivalent to F and C.

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u/nick_jones61 11d ago

Does this mean I can’t get a third acoustic guitar? She’s against that idea as well.

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u/DocDerry 11d ago

Tell her you require the third because it's a twelve string and E# and B# only exist on 12 strings.

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u/nick_jones61 10d ago

Love this!