i'm confused

Try this site:

http://www.guitarland.com/Music10/MusFund/Guitar/Guitar.html

He matches up fretboard schematics to staves in standard notation.  I think it will help you figure out what you need.

That is the first fret B string in first position or 6th fret G etc.  The C with one ledger line  through it below the staff is the third fret of th A string.

thank you for clearing that up.  For some reason I thought the c written in piano music as  the note below the treble staff with one ledger line through it was played on the b string first fret(or g string 5 fret etc.)

Somthing that is kind of fun, is to just play the bass-line.  It is a pretty good way to better visualize chord changes and strum patterns.  It has been working for me pretty well this last week, but now that I have said it, I will now embark on a string of pieces where it won't work at all.

Anyway, try it out.  BTW, the bass is the lower staff.

I'm afraid Nick's got it a bit backwards... although the guitar transposes an octave, the guitar sounds one octave lower than written; if the piano music is for the second space from the top of the treble clef, that's 'high C' (one octave above middle C), and it'll be at the 8th fret of the 1st string, or the 13th fret of the 2nd string, or the 17th fret of the 3rd string.  In other words, you've got it right, Ovation Player, in that middle C on the piano is 1st fret, 2nd string on the guitar.

Writing your own arrangements using keyboard music as a source can be tricky, because piano uses a lot more 'open' voicings than the guitar does.  The guitar tends to use 'closed' voicings, meaning the distance between any two voices is less than an octave.

In general, you can use this as a rough outline of how to make a simple arrangement:

1. Map out the chord structure, when you have three or more voices sounding together.
2. The 'top' voice is usually the most important one, so you want to use chord voicings that include the top note, and play single notes between chords if the highest voice calls for that.
3. Next look at the bass line; often, there's a bass 'hook' in a piece, and you want to approximate that in your playing.  You'll probably need to move it up an octave to make it playable with the soprano (top) voice.
4. In most popular music, you're essentially done.  You might want to look at using inner voices (the alto and tenor) to figure out arpeggio fills and other decorations
5. If you're working with heavier duty classical stuff, like Bach Inventions, or transcriptions of Beethoven Quartets, ALL the voices are important.  In that case, you need to find a way to make them all playable on the guitar, often by changing keys (transposing all the notes the same number of chromatic steps) to incorporate open strings.

Tom

Nope - I agree with Nick. This is where we play the notes, not where they sound in real terms, and the original question did ask us to avoid the Octave Higher concept.

A :-)

No wonder I'm confused.  I guess I'll just have to go with idea of playing what sounds right  to me and is possible for me to play on the guitar

Sorry, maybe I misunderstood the question.  

I wasn't transposing.  You really don't want to transpose to play the actual frequency of the note.  So if you want to play middle C on the guitar, it is the third fret A string.  If you want to play the C at the third space on the treble clef, it is the 1st fret B string.

Forget about the difference in octaves.

If you are trying to match the actual frequency of notes, follow noteboat's suggestion.

Alan/Nick, I certainly understand where you're coming from and didn't intend to muddy the waters.  The original post states it's written in the second space from the top of the treble clef, and that's an octave above middle C... to play it as written, it's on the first fret of the second string.

I was stating where the equivalent piano tone was to assure Ovation Player that he wasn't getting it wrong... the rest of my post works whether you transpose or chose not to.

Tom

Yessiree and we wonder why anyone gets confused...lol