I'm as much a beginner to music theory as to playing the guitar, and have just started with the construction of scales.
The biggest challenge, coming from an analytical IT background, is learning that there are some conventions that are that don't quite tie into mathematical logic (at least, not in the ways I'm used to).
Right now, I can't quite grasp the reason why there's no half step between B&C and E&F? Is it simply the way it was done? How did they get around to naming notes like that? "Uh, yeah...let's call this one 'A', and the next one...uh...A#. And then, what, B? Yeah, that sound good. And then B#? Nah, Don't feel like having a B#. Let's just call it C..." :D
Hope I'm not coming across as completely ignorant!
Yeah, that's simply the way it's done. Oh, and there is a B# - it's the same as C.
It starts out pretty simply, with seven notes, all having letter names. That was good enough for several hundred years of written music. Then folks played around with other notes - flats came first. And then, if you could lower a note, you should be able to raise one... so we added sharps.
The tricky thing here is that sharps and flats were different notes. F# and Gb were close, but not the same - and early keyboards had split black keys so you could choose which one to play.
That wasn't very convenient, so a couple hundred years ago we standardized on 'even tempering', which made all the notes 'wrong' by a bit - but made the sharps and flats the same note.
Now if you really want to stretch your mind theory-wise, sharps and flats raise or lower a note by a half-step. You can also use double sharps (written as 'x') and double flats to change notes by a whole step. They actually get used in music, too - for instance, the relative minor of B is G#:
G#-A#-B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#
and if you want to play that as a harmonic minor scale, you need to raise the seventh note... so F# becomes Fx. You wouldn't write it as G natural, because you've already got a 'G' note - writing it as Fx actually makes it easier to read.
Fun, huh? :)
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