Just as we have major and minor chords, we’ve got major and minor scales.  Minor chords and scales have one thing in common – they’ve got a flatted third (when compared to the same major chord or scale).  But there’s also one big difference worth noting: there’s only one kind of major scale.  That’s what makes it so valuable to music theory as a yardstick for measuring other scales and chords – there is never any confusion about what the notes will be for any given application.  On the other hand, there are LOTS of different minor scales!

There’s also one area where major and minor scales overlap: the ‘relative’ major and minor scales can be constructed using the SAME notes.  This concept is called “modality” (as in “modes”), and it can be one of the most confusing aspects of music theory for guitarists.  So before we get into the various types of minor scales, we’re going to take a brief detour back to the pentatonic scale and apply the concept of modality.

Our first position minor pentatonic scale looked like this (in A):

| 5 |   |   | 8 |
| 5 |   |   | 8 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   |   | 8 |

The notes in the scale are A (the root), C (the b3 – because an A major scale’s third is C#), D (the 4th), E (the 5th), and G (the b7, because A major contains G#).  But if we look at the letter names, A-C-D-E-G, we can see that they’re also all part of the C major scale.

These notes can be arranged C-D-E-G-A to create the C major pentatonic scale.  Comparing it to the major scale, we find the formula 1-2-3-5-6.  And here we’ve got a big clue for why this scale is so useful… the major scale notes that are missing are 4 and 7.  I’m going to digress even more here and show you why the pentatonic is the most widely used scale for beginners.

When notes interact with each other, as in simultaneous melodies or notes played against a chord progression, the result is harmony.  And although the word ‘harmony’ implies agreement, that’s not always true in music.  Some sounds agree very well, and we call those “consonant” sounds.  Other notes played in tandem sound more like two cats tied up in a bag; we call those “dissonant” sounds.

What one listener considers pleasing won’t be universal.  That might explain why some folks prefer listening to the Carpenters, while others put on Korn when they want to relax.  So when we classify sounds as consonant or dissonant, we’re really talking about what the average listener perceives.  To complicate things a bit, what the average listener considers consonant or dissonant has changed over time.  Given today’s ears, we can classify intervals (two pitches sounded at the same time) into these broad groups:

Consonant              Mostly consonant         Mostly dissonant          Dissonant
Unison/octave (C-C)    minor 3rd (C-Eb)         Major 2nd (C-D)           minor 2nd (C-Db)
Perfect 4th (C-F)      Major 3rd (C-E)          minor 6th (C-Ab)          tritone (C-F#/Gb)
Perfect 5th (C-G)      Major 6th (C-A)          minor 7th (C-Bb)          Major 7th (C-B)

These are broad categories, and the “mostly” ones will depend on context – a minor 6th may sound just fine in one sequence (especially in a minor key), and not so good in another.  These are the grey areas of music.  But the consonant ones will always sound consonant, and the dissonant ones will always disagree.

Music, like cooking, can be improved when you add a little spice.  Just like cooking, too much spice makes something unfit for human consumption.  Dissonance is the spice of music – you want some, but not too much.  Let’s look at the major scale notes played against each other – upper case “M” is major, lower case “m” is minor.  I’ve also marked the usually dissonant intervals with an asterisk, and the always dissonant intervals with two:

Using the major scale, 20 of the 49 possibilities create some dissonance.  If you’re playing random notes you’ve got about a 40% chance of adding some spice through dissonance. Also notice that two asterisks only appear when one or both of the notes is F or B.  Let’s knock out these notes and see what happens:

Now only 8 of the 25 possible combinations results in dissonance – a 13% chance of adding spice.  And not one of the notes results in a combination that will always be dissonant.

A dissonance in music needs to be ‘resolved’ to feel fulfilled.  A beginning improviser, whose command of the instrument (and his or her ears) isn’t fully developed is playing more or less at random.  If you have a 40% chance of playing a dissonance, you have a 60% chance of resolving it by accident – maybe not in the best method, but at least following it by a consonance.  And 40% x 40% = 16% of the time what you’re playing won’t be immediately resolved.

If we use the pentatonic scale, 87% of our notes are already consonant.  The 13% that aren’t will be followed (again, at random) by notes that resolve 87% of the time.  13% x 13% = less than a 2% chance that you’ll be dragging out the dissonance.  The pentatonic scale is practically built for poke & pray soloing – 98.3% of the time you’ll sound like you know what you’re doing, even if it’s completely random.  And you will never face a harsh dissonance of a tritone or minor 2nd!  Add just a little bit of experience and the success ratio quickly becomes 100%.  You may not sound like the greatest soloist – because you’re not taking the biggest chances – but you’ll sound like a competent improviser.

All this is great in theory… but let’s start putting it under your fingers.  Put on a backing track in a MAJOR key, and put your fingers into minor pentatonic position 1 three frets below your key note – if your backing track is in B, you’ll be playing in G# minor.  Go ahead and solo, but end your solo on the SECOND note of the minor pentatonic scale – the B note on the 6th string (7th or 19th fret), the 3rd string (4th or 16th fret), or the 1st string (7th or 19th fret).  You’ll find that no notes were difficult to work with, and the end result sounded anywhere from a little bland to really good.

Ok, I’m done with that digression, although we’ll return to the concept of modality in a later section.  But it wasn’t completely a digression, because we’re about to apply it.

We’ll start by looking at the most basic minor scale, the natural (or “pure”) minor.  This is the scale that uses exactly the same notes as the major scale.  The natural minor scale is created by starting from the 6th degree (or note) of the major scale – if you’re working in C major, the relative natural minor will be C major notes starting from A: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A.  You can use the SAME fingerings we reviewed for the major scale, but you’ll be treating a different note as the tonic, or ‘home base’.

Because the notes are the same as the major scale, the fingerings are also the same.  All we do is make a different note the focal point of the melody, and we’ve shifted from the major to the relative natural minor scale.

One quick note about the focal point – it’s incredibly difficult to set ‘rules’ that determine which tone will be the tonic.  Some folks will tell you it’s the last note of a melody (often true, but not always), the note used most frequently (sometimes true, but usually not), or the first note (rarely true unless the soloist is a beginner).  But a melody will always feel like it has come to a resting point when the tonic is reached… so determining the tonic is sort of like defining pornography: you know it when you see/hear it.

Get a backing track in A minor, and use one of the C major fingerings over it… but focus your attention on the A notes.  If you’re using the fifth position fingering, it’ll look like this:

5-(7)-(8)
5-6-8
5-7
5-7-9
5-7-8
5-7-8

When you solo over the progression, you might notice a couple of notes are harder to work with.  In particular, the G note (4th string 5th fret or 2nd string 8th fret) may clash with the dominant chord.  Understanding why that happens requires another brief detour into harmony.

Earlier I explored the harmony created by two notes of the major scale sounded simultaneously.  Those two sounds create intervals.  If we add a THIRD sound to the mix, we get a chord.

There are several different systems of harmony out there, but most music makes use of “tertian” harmony, building chords in thirds.  The simplest chords contain only three notes, and they’re called “triads”.  What that means is that whatever note we start with in chord construction, the chord will consist of every other note – if you start from C, you’ll skip over D and use E (the third note of the C scale).  Skipping over F gets you to G, and the combination C-E-G creates a C major chord.

Different chords have different formulas; the major chord works out to 1-3-5 against the major scale.  A minor chord uses the b3 – C minor is C-Eb-G.  There are two other common triads, the diminished (1-b3-b5) and the augmented (1-3-#5).

We don’t typically use random chords in constructing a progression.  Instead, we use chords that belong to the same key.  That means if we’re in C major, we’ll usually use only chords that have notes from the C major scale.  Building chords in thirds using only C major scale tones gives us the following:

C-E-G (C major, 1-3-5)
D-F-A (D minor, because a D major scale has F# in it, so F is a b3; we always use the major scale of the chord root to figure out the chord’s formula)
E-G-B (E minor, since E major has G#)
F-A-C (F major)
G-B-D (G major)
A-C-E (A minor, because A major has C#)
B-D-F (B diminished, because a B major scale has both D# and F#)

These chords will sound perfectly acceptable together, and many simple songs are made from various combinations.  But we do want a little spice in our music, so we sometimes harmonize chords in four notes.  Without getting into chord theory too much, a chord that has the seventh note of it’s root scale is a “maj7” (major 7th) chord; a chord that has the b7 of its major scale is a “7th” (or “dominant 7th) chord.  We can combine these terms – a minor chord with a b7 is a m7 chord; a minor chord with the natural 7th will be a m/maj7 – that’s kind of rare, because it’s pretty dissonant, but the labeling of chords is consistent.

Harmonizing the C major scale in four parts gives us these additional chords:

C-E-G-B (Cmaj7)
D-F-A-C (Dm7)
E-G-B-D (Em7)
F-A-C-E (Fmaj7)
G-B-D-F (G7)
A-C-E-G (Am7)
B-D-F-A (Bm7b5)

With these additional chords, there are three that have a “tension” – they sound like they have to move somewhere.  These chords are the B diminished, the G7, and the Bm7b5.

Most music makes use of tension/release: building excitement, then letting the listener back down.  One of the most common ways to do that is through a V7-I cadence, moving from G7 to C.

Since the notes of the natural minor scale are exactly the same as that of the major scale, we end up with exactly the same chords – except they’ll appear on different scale degrees.  If we use a G7 to build tension in the key of C, we can get a satisfying C-F-G7-C chord progression, or I-IV-V7-I.  Applying exactly the same logic to the A natural minor scale, we’d get a progression of Am-Dm-Em7-Am.

There’s nothing wrong with that progression, but it lacks the excitement of the dominant 7th chord.  So hundreds of years ago, composers began altering the minor scale – they wanted an E7 chord to create tension that resolves to Am.

Since a dominant 7th chord is 1-3-5-b7 against the major scale, E7 will be E-G#-B-D.  Raising the G note to G# creates the desired harmony, so replacing G with G# in an A natural minor creates a scale called the A harmonic minor.

Using the A natural minor fingering above as our base, we can get the A harmonic minor fingering below:

5-(7)-(8)
5-6-9
5-7
6-7-9
5-7-8
5-7-8

Just as we did with the major scale, we can find alternate fingerings for the notes you have to stretch for.  This scale becomes a lot more finger-friendly if we shift to fourth position when we get to the third string:

4-5-(7)
5-6
4-5-7
6-7
5-7-8
5-7-8

There was one big problem with this scale: singers hated it.  The harmonic minor scale uses an augmented second interval between the 6th and 7th notes (from F-G# in Am), and that’s a difficult interval to sing accurately.  Singers prefer to use half steps – one fret on the guitar – or whole steps (two frets).

One solution is to raise the 6th note of the minor scale.  That creates a whole step between the 6th and 7th notes, and the distance from the 5th note to the 6th changes from a half step to a whole step… still very singable.  Our A minor scale would now be A-B-C-D-E-F#-G#-A, or 1-2-b3-4-5-6-7.

This scale wasn’t used very much, because it’s so close to the major scale.  In fact, it’s the major scale with only one note changed – so if the melody spends much time away from the third note, it starts to sound major.  Composers quickly discarded it (in favor of the scale we’ll look at in a moment) – but this scale did find a resurgence in jazz, where it’s called the “jazz minor” or the “bebop minor”.  Folks from Berklee call it the “real melodic minor”, but folks from Berklee often have their own names for things!

Using fifth and fourth positions again, this minor scale can be fingered like this – the shift is now on the 4th string:

4-5-(7)
4-5-7
4-5-7
4-6-7
5-7
5-7-8

The solution classical music composers found to the problem of both creating the desired harmony and keeping the singers happy was unusual: they created a hybrid scale.  This is one area where pedagogy (how things are taught) differs a bit from actual practice; here’s the pedagogy part:

Going up, the scale raises the 6th and 7th notes, creating the right harmony and keeping the singers happy.  But going down, it will be the same as the natural minor scale, giving a minor sound to melodies that don’t touch on the flatted third for a while.  In a minor, it will look like this:

A-B-C-D-E-F#-G#-A-G-F-E-D-C-B-A
 (going up)        (going down)

Because the direction of the melody determines which pitches will be used for the 6th and 7th notes, this is called the melodic minor scale.  You’ve already got the fingerings – it’s the jazz minor going up, and the natural minor going down.

In practice this scale doesn’t always work the way it’s taught.  Composers and improvisers can use the natural minor part going up and the jazz minor part down – they simply try to avoid that hard to sing interval.  In either direction, melodies will sometimes use all the notes, treating the one from the ‘wrong’ direction as a passing tone.  As we’ll see, minor scales are incredibly flexible.

There are still more minor scales to come: I’ll cover the Dorian and Phrygian in the next section about modes, and a few others like the Gypsy minor in the final part, exotic scales.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 16 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Now we’ll get into the grand-daddy of music theory, the major scale.

The major scale is important to theory, because it’s the yardstick by which we measure all other scales… when I’ve said that the minor pentatonic is 1-b3-4-5-b7, I’ve meant that those are the pitches compared to the major scale.

To understand the structure of the major scale, we first need to look at the spacing between the letter names. Not all letter names are the same distance apart. The letters B and C are just one fret apart, and the letters E and F are one fret apart – all the other letters are separated by two frets. That leaves one fret in between the other letters… a fret between A and B, C and D, D and E, F and G, and one between G and A.

We can think of an ‘in between’ fret as a letter name that has been inflected, or changed a little bit. The Second fret of the first string can be thought of as a little bit higher than F (F-sharp, or F#), but it can also be seen as a little bit lower than G (G-flat, or Gb). As a result, each of these in-between pitches have two names.

The two names are called “enharmonic”, which means they’re written differently, but they sound the same. Some guitarists will tell you this means the names are interchangeable, but they’re not.

The major scale is our first diatonic (through-the-tones, or seven note) major scale. That means it’s going to have exactly one of each letter name.

To illustrate that, I’ll use the A major scale. We’ll need one of each letter name: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

The pattern of the major scale is whole step (two frets), whole step, half step (one fret), whole step, whole step, whole step, and half step. So if we started on the open fifth string, we’d get this:

----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
-0-2-4-5-7-9-11-12
----------------------

The open string is A, and two frets above it will be B. Our next scale pitch is two frets higher than that – on one of the ‘in between’ notes… it’s either C# or Db. The pitch after that falls one fret higher, on D.

If we call the scale note Db, we’ll end up with TWO D notes (one flat, one ‘natural’, or unchanged). Because our major scale is diatonic, we MUST call this note C# in the context of the scale.

After D, we go up two frets to E, and then we have to go up two frets again – to the pitch between F and G. Since we haven’t used the letter F yet, this note must be F#. Two frets higher than that must be G#, because we’ve already used A as our starting point.

That means our A major scale spelling will be A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#-A. When we’re looking at any scale or chord with an A root, that’s our yardstick for comparison: anything containing C natural will have a b3 – which means it will be ‘minor’.

The next thing to realize about our major scale is that we’ll have to play three notes on most of the strings because of the way the notes are spaced. Unlike the simple pentatonic scales, this means we’ll have a LOT more fingering choices!

Only two fingerings will put all the major scale notes underneath your fingers. One is the major scale with the root on the 6th string under your 2nd finger – here’s the C major scale in that fingering:

-7- 8-(10)-
-8-10-
-7-9-10-
-7-9-10-
-7-8-10-
-(7)-8-10-

The notes I’ve marked in parenthesis lie above or below the scale root – they’re part of the scale, but they’re not part of a complete octave in this fingering. That means when you’re using the scale to improvise, these notes are available… but when you’re practicing the scale, you want to start and end with a C note; otherwise it won’t sound like C major, and you want to get your ears used to the sound of the notes in relation to ‘home base’. That’s going to be important later on when we look at the modes of the major scale.

The other fingering that puts all the notes under your fingers starts with the root under your fourth finger on the 5th string. In C major, that’s in 12th position:

-(12)-(13)-(15)-
-12-13-(15)-
-12-14-
-12-14-15-
-(12)-(14)-15-
-(12)-(13)-(15)-

Many other fingerings are possible, and there are variations of these fingerings. For example, if you start with the root under your fourth finger on the 6th string (in the key of C, that’s in fifth position) you’ll find you have to stretch for one note – in the key of C, there’s a B note that’s not right under your fingers. You can get it by stretching or shifting on the fourth string, like this:

-5-7-8-
-5-6-8-
-5-7-
-5-7-9-
-5-7-8-
-(5)-(7)-8-

Or by stretching or shifting on the third string, like this:

-5-7-8-
-5-6-8-
-4-5-7-
-5-7-
-5-7-8-
-(5)-(7)-8-

These choices actually create three different fingerings of the major scale in this position! In the first, you’ll hit the B by stretching your fourth finger to the 9th fret; in the second, you’ll stretch to reach the B on the 4th fret… and because you’re stretching, you’ll return to position by also playing the C with your first finger, playing the 3rd string notes with a 1-1-3 fingering… or you can shift to fourth position for the 3rd string, playing those notes with a 1-2-4 fingering, and returning to fifth position for the 2nd string notes.

Because we have so many choices, guitarists take one of two approaches to learn the major scale. Option 1 is to memorize just a few fingering patterns (typically four to six) that let you get all the major scale notes on the fretboard. Option 2 is to learn the spellings of the major scale in each key, and the name of each note on the fretboard. In my opinion, while option 1 is ‘faster’, option 2 is better for two reasons: first, because you won’t be locked into ‘box’ playing when you’re improvising you’ll be able to find easier fingerings for many passages; second, learning the spellings and note locations will be a great help when you’re dealing with other things, like complex chord structures.

On to some of the other useful fingerings – if you put the root under the second finger on the 5th string, you’ll reach for two notes, the fourth note of the scale on the 1st and 6th strings. In the key of C, you’ll be in second position:

-(1)-(3)-(5)-
-(3)-(5)-
-2-4-5-
-2-3-5-
-(2)-3-5-
-(1)-(3)-(5)-

Scales can also be started with the first finger, and many guitarists use these for a reason I’ll get into shortly. With the root on the 6th string, our first note is on the 8th fret in C; you can think of this as eighth position or ninth – the difference is what notes your second finger plays. In 8th position, your second finger will get the 9th fret, and you’ll stretch for the 12th fret notes… in 9th position, your second finger will get the 10th fret, and it’s the first finger that’s doing the stretching. Here’s C major again:

-8-(10)-(12)-
-8-10-12-
-9-10-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

Just to add one more variation, the G note on the 8th fret of the second string is also found on the 12th fret of the 3rd string, so you could do this instead – if you’re keeping track, that means you have four possible ways to finger the scale in this position:

-8-(10)-(12)-
-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

Starting from a 5th string root, we can also do C major in 3rd position, which looks like this:

-(3)-(5)-(7)-
-(3)-(5)-(6)-
-4-5-
-3-5-7-
-3-5-7-
-(3)-(5)-(7)-

Or like this:

-(3)-(5)-(7)-
-(5)-(6)-
-4-5-(7)-
-3-5-7-
-3-5-7-
-(3)-(5)-(7)-

The reason these fingerings are widely used in spite of the stretching involved is because they start with a first finger root, and put three notes on almost every string. When you have three notes on a string, you can use economy picking – playing the first note down, the second one up, the third note down… and continuing the downstroke to the next string. If you’re going down the scale, you can reverse this, playing the highest note on each string with an upstroke.

Economy picking conserves motion, allowing you to play a bit faster. If we combine these scale forms with a shift of position on the second string, you can get a quick scale run that spans almost 2-1/2 octaves:

-10-12-13-
-10-12-13-
-9-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

There are even more possible fingerings – the ones that start with your third finger on a scale root. But as these require even more stretching, they’re seldom used. If you’ve got the inclination to try them (and I play them sometimes as finger stretching exercises), apply what you’ve learned so far to the fretboard.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 16 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Hexatonic scales are any scales that have six notes; the blues scale was actually your first hexatonic scale. But now we’ll try a different note: the 6th of the major scale.

This pitch is located one fret below the b7, or two frets above the 5. The hexatonic scale has been widely used in rock, in solos ranging from Jimmy Page’s “Stairway to Heaven” solo to Carlos Santana’s work on “Black Magic Woman”. Many guitarists incorrectly identify this particular hexatonic scale as the Dorian scale – we’ll look at the differences soon.

Going back to our first minor pentatonic fingering, here’s the hexatonic scale with the addition of 6 – we have two possibilities:

 | R  |  |   | b3 |
 | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 | b3 |  | 4 |
 | b7 |  | R |
 | 4  |  | 5 |    | 6 |
 | R  |  |   | b3 |

 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |  | 4 |
 | 6 | b7 |  | R |
 |   | 4  |  | 5 |
 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |

The second fingering only has one practical fingering:

 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |
 | 4 |    | 5 |    |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |

And that’s also the case with the third fingering:

 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    | 6 |
 |   | R  |   |    | b3 |   |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |    |   |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |    |   |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |    |   |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    |   |

In theory, the fourth fingering could have a couple, but in practice only one is easy:

 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |    | R |    |
 |   | 4  |    | 5 |    |
 |   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |

And it’s the same with the fifth fingering:

 |   | b7 |   | R  |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 16 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Almost all of the other scales we use can be seen as the pentatonic scale with the addition of one or more notes. This has led to teaching methods based on five scale positions (like the CAGED system that you might have heard of), but I think that’s limiting. As we add notes to the scale, we’ll end up with MORE than two notes on some strings, which opens up a lot more fingering possibilities. But for the next couple of scales we’ll keep things simple, and look at only five fingerings.

Blues is a traditional music that uses the pentatonic scale with additions. Many blues tunes use a number of additions to the pentatonic scale, but a lot of blues tunes add just one note – the b5 of the major scale, often called the “blue note”. That gives us a scale formula of 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7.

Looking at our first pentatonic fingering, here’s the scale you’ve learned:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

Here’s the same scale with the addition of the “blue note”:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  | 9  | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

When we take this scale into the next fingering, we have a problem: not all of the note fit under your fingers. This is a lot like the situation we encountered in the minor pentatonic scale’s 3rd fingering, where we have to shift on one string. But now, because of the layout of the guitar’s tuning, we have a couple of different options…

We can add the ‘blue note’ by reaching back:

      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
      | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 9 || 10 |    |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |

Or we can add the blue note by stretching forward:

 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 | 14 |

Because we’ve got a couple of options, we now have more than five scale fingerings. The trick to unlocking the possibilities lies in learning which note is which in the scale fingerings.

Our first minor pentatonic scale fingering looks like this, in terms of the notes we’re playing compared to the major scale:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

“R” designates the root note (the tonic) of the scale; each additional pitch is now designated by its position in the major scale. The ‘blue note’ is the b5 of the major scale, which is one half step (one fret) below the 5… or one half step above the 4. Applying this to minor pentatonic fingering 1, we get this:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

Now let’s look at minor pentatonic fingering 2:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  |

We can add the blue note by going one half step below the 5:

   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
   |    | b7 |   | R  |
   | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 b5| 5  |    |   | b7 |
   |    | b3 |   | 4  |

or by going one half step above the 4:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |

Changing the third minor pentatonic fingering is easy:

 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |    |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |

The fourth leads to two fingerings, one moving back:

 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

And one moving forward:

 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    | b3 |   | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R |    |
 | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

The fifth position also leads to two different fingerings:

 |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R |    |    | b3 |    |
 | 5 |    |    | b7 |    |
 |   | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |   | b7 |    | R  |    |

 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |    |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 |    | R |    |    | b3 |
 | b5 | 5 |    |    | b7 |
 |    |   | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |

As you work with incorporating the b5 into your fingerings, you’ll see how being able to view it as the b5 (one fret below the 5) or as the #4 (one fret above the 4) will help your mastery of the fretboard.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 15 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The Minor Pentatonic Scale

The most commonly used scale for guitarists is the minor pentatonic scale. A few definitions before we start playing it, because these terms will come up again: “scale” comes from the Latin word for “ladder”, and it’s used to describe any sequence of tones that rise or fall through one octave. (An “octave” is the distance from any pitch and the next pitch with the same name – like the distance from fifth string, third fret C to second string, first fret C.). “Pentatonic” comes from the Greek words “pente”, which means five, and “tonikos”, or tone; pentatonic scales are any scales with five different notes in the octave. And “minor” is a term applied to any scale or chord that contains the major scale’s third note lowered by a half step – a C major scale is the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C; any C based chord or scale that has Eb in can be considered minor.

What makes scales sound different from each other isn’t just the notes in the scale – it’s also the relationship of the sounds to each other. In most melodies, scales, and chord progressions, there’s going to be one pitch that sounds final… like you’ve arrived at the end of the musical journey. That pitch is called the “tonic”, and it’s the note that names the scale: A C minor pentatonic has C as it’s home base, while an Eb major pentatonic (which contains exactly the same pitches, as we’ll see later on) has Eb the tonic.

When we analyze the makeup of a scale to see what makes it different from other scales, music theorists compare them to the major scale – the building block of almost all music theory. Later on in this series we’ll look at what makes up a major scale; for right now, we’ll just say that the minor pentatonic scale has the formula 1-b3-4-5-b7, which means a C minor pentatonic scale has the notes C, Eb, F, G, and Bb.

If we start from the C note on the eighth fret of the sixth string, we’ll find the easiest way to finger this scale is C, then Eb on the 11th fret of the 6th string, F on the 8th fret of the 5th string, G on the 10th fret of the 5th string, Bb on the 8th fret of the 4th string, and C again at the 10th fret of the 4th string. Those notes make up the entire scale, but we can keep going through the next octave and get this fingering:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

A brief note about fingering: although there are some guitarists, even a few famous ones, who use just two fingers for these scales, I’d advise you to learn them in strict position (fingering 1-4, 1-3, 1-3, 1-3, 1-4, 1-4 for the one just shown. Avoiding unnecessary shifts of position will help you visualize the fretboard; once you can “see” the notes that belong to this scale, feel free to use whatever shifts and stretches you’d like.

Notice there are just two notes on each string. That’s because of the scale structure, and the way the guitar is tuned… and it gives us a huge advantage over other instruments in using this scale. Since each string will have only two notes, one of them must be the lowest note on the sixth string – and as a result, there will be only five possible fingerings, one beginning with each scale note.

To put it another way, if you’re playing the C pentatonic scale in 8th position, you’re playing 10th fret notes on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th strings, and 11th fret notes on the other three strings. If you want to move your hand up to the 10th position, you can play those same notes using the first and second fingers; we can complete the next scale fingering by filling in the pitches C, Eb, F, G, and Bb that we can reach from the 10th position:

 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    | 12 |    |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |

We can continue moving up the fretboard to the 11th position and get this fingering… which is actually the one I teach last in lessons, because it’s the only one that involves a shift of position:

 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    |    | 16 |
 | 12 |    |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |

You can also play that fingering one octave lower, in open position. But when learning scales, I find it best to stick to “closed” fingerings (no open strings) until you’ve mastered the positions. If you can’t reach the 16th fret on your guitar, no problem – just practice these fingerings in a different key. In the key of F, the first fingering will be at the first position, the second fingering in third position, and this fingering will be in 5th position.

Now I’m going to drop an octave – notes on the 15th fret are an octave higher than the notes on the 3rd fret, so this fourth fingering pattern will begin with the G (the fourth note of the C minor pentatonic scale) at the third fret:

 | 3 |   |   | 6 |
 |   | 4 |   | 6 |
 | 3 |   | 5 |   |
 | 3 |   | 5 |   |
 | 3 |   |   | 6 |
 | 3 |   |   | 6 |

There’s one thing I want you to notice about this fingering: it’s the same as fingering 1, but with two notes moved up a fret – the higher note on the 5th string, and the lower note on the 2nd string. The reason why that happens is important in music theory, but it’s beyond the score of this lesson – I’ll talk about it at some point in the future.

Finally, our last fingering begins with the fifth note of the scale – Bb if you’re in the key of C. We end up with this:

 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 | 5 |   |   | 8 |
 | 5 |   |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |

Notice two things about this fingering: first, it’s the only fingering that’s perfectly symmetrical, with the two ‘outside’ strings fingered 2-4, and the two central ‘inside’ strings fingered 1-4. Second, I want you to notice that there is a note on the 8th fret of every string… just as there was in our first position.

This means we’ve come full circle, and have now identified every possible fretboard position of the notes in this scale. A complete view of the C minor pentatonic will look like this:

( fingering 3)      (fingering 5)      (fingering 2)           (fingering 4)
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
   | 1 |   |   | 4 |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   |    | 16 |    | 18 |   |
 0 |   |   | 3 |   | 5 |   |   | 8 |   | 10 |    | 12 |    |   | 15 |    | 17 |    |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   | 5 |   |   | 8 |   | 10 |    |    | 13 |   | 15 |    | 17 |    |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   | 10 |    |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
           (fingering 4)       (fingering 1)      (fingering 3)

Depending on your guitar, you might be able to keep going for another position, or even two.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 14 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Technical skills are important. The average professional musician will make fewer mistakes than the average amateur. The pro will be able to handle more difficult fingerings, play faster, and so on. The pro puts a lot more time into practice and performance rehearsal. These differences are obvious.

This leads the average aspiring musician to focus exclusively on their practice time. Putting in more time (and putting more into your time in terms of focus, practice organization, etc.) will probably make you a better technician. You might even become so good that you can make a living at playing. But that won’t necessarily make you a better musician.

Musicianship is the big picture – the total package, the creation of the entire musical experience. Technical ability is the toolbox we use for creating our big picture. The brush strokes of a sign painter might be just as precise as those of Rembrandt… but that technical ability won’t help the sign painter become a great artist without adding a few extra ingredients. Someone who has the big picture can be a great artist without having extreme technical ability – in the art world, a parallel might be Grandma Moses or Jackson Pollack. Their works don’t show the technical ability of many others, but that didn’t keep their art from rising above the pack.

I’m going to look at three and a half of the non-technical skills that great musical artists develop. Maybe you can use these musings as a road map for your own advancement.

1. Great musicians listen deeply.

There’s a lot going on in music. There’s the timing, the choice of notes, the relationship of pitches in a melody to each other, the interaction of pitches to create harmony, and the distribution of that harmony across instruments. There are variations in dynamics and phrasing that make each interpretation of a song slightly different from all the others – even if they’re played by the same group. The result is many layers of complexity, even in simple music.

When you’re listening to music, strive to get the most out of it that you can. When you’re practicing, keep those ears working: listen closely to the sounds you’re making, and how they relate to the techniques you’re using. When you’re playing with others, listen to what they’re doing, and how you’re relating to them. Eventually, you want to develop what pros call “big ears”, the ability to take in and process the big picture as it happens.

2. Great musicians categorize sounds in their minds.

Every rhythm, every scale, every interval, chord voicing, arrangement etc. is different. But they’re made up of the same stuff: sounds happening in time. Great musicians define sound in terms they can use.

For some that means understanding traditional music theory. For others it might be focusing on the ‘color’ they get when tones are distributed in a different way. But no matter how they go about it, great musicians organize their mental toolbox of sounds.

When you hear something that you like, listen to it over and over. Break it down: what makes it different from other things you’ve heard? What makes it similar? Can you apply the difference to another melody, or chord progression?

Great music and great performances break down into the combination of small things that aren’t remarkable in themselves. Becoming a musician isn’t just about adding more tools to your technical toolbox – it’s about taking the tools you already own and understanding exactly what you can do with them.

3. Great musicians use time.

Music is sound occurring as time unfolds. Time is the scaffolding on which we hang everything musical. We can organize everything neatly on that scaffold – with every sound happening in precise, regular time – or we can move those sounds forward or back against the beat.

The beat is the pulse of music. But the beat is not the music. We can divide up beats in different ways, we can play ahead of (or behind) the pulse of a tune. Great musicians ‘feel the beat’ and exploit the relationship between the pulse and what they do over it.

Any rhythm you can play on a guitar has three basic parts: the attack (when the sound begins), the duration (how long it lasts), and what happens in between. Silence is a huge part of rhythm. Listen deeply to the rhythms you hear, both in music and in everyday life, and categorize them in a way that works for you. Sharpen your sense of musical pulse at every opportunity – there is no substitute for an internal sense of rhythm.

3.5. Many great musicians know where they came from musically.

You’ll hear most musicians talk about their “influences.” For some, it’s just a laundry list of artists they like to listen to. And yes, those artists will influence your playing – because they shape the sound you hear inside your head… and great musicians take that sound in their head and put it out through their instrument, duplicating their vision as closely as possible.

But most of the great musicians I’ve known listen widely as well as deeply. I know a brilliant sax player who spends a lot of time listening to Hendrix. I know a punk guitarist who listens to a lot of Stravinsky. And I know classical musicians who spend time with bluegrass – and vice versa.

Listening widely as well as deeply, and categorizing the sounds they hear, allows these musicians to be deliberately influenced by other sources. A great example would be Paul Simon being influenced by African music (especially Mbaqanga) on the album “Graceland.” These musicians continually seek out and experiment with the unfamiliar, keeping what works for them and discarding the rest.

I hope you’ll find these observations useful in your own development as a musician.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 13 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

On Becoming a Musician was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Before you start to play, imagine the possibilities: give. Give, give, give. Give me! Give now! Give me now! Now give! There are lots of possibilities. Combine them with the nuance of emotion in your mind: pleading, begging, demanding, asking. Is your musical child curious or angry? Hungering or relatively indifferent?

Now go to it with the backing track and your three word vocabulary. See what you can do. See how it feels. Notice how you’re becoming familiar with what the notes are going to sound like over each chord. Become aware of what you hear when you go from the first note to the second, or the first to the third, or the second to the third. Is it different when you reverse the order? How?

After you’ve got three notes down, add the other scale tones one at a time. In a half hour, you can easily go from using one note to using three or four, maybe even five, and being confident about what they’ll sound like.

When that happens, you’ve started soling deliberately. It’s no longer a “poke and pray” situation. You aresaying something with music!

I’m a big fan of learning music theory. But theory follows function: some composer did something, and theorists created rules to describe what happened. In English (or any other language), grammar follows usage: people learn to speak first, and then learning grammar helps them speak ‘properly’. If they choose, they can speak ‘improperly’ – doing it for effect. It’s their choice.

But the point here is that they learned to speak before there was ever a distinction between proper and improper speech – you start by learning to say something, and then refine as you gain experience and knowledge. And you learn to speak with meaning by starting with one word.

Try it. I’ve heard students make amazing progress in just one or two lessons with this approach (and they’ve heard it too!) Even if you consider yourself pretty expert at soloing, I think you’ll find the exercise pretty eye opening.

Editor’s note: If you’re interested in more on soloing, be sure to check out the Guitar Noise page on Solos. After reading this essay from Tom, you might find our series on “From Scales to Solos,” Part 2 will be particularly helpful in preparing you for the second part of Tom’s series.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 12 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More on Language-Based Soloing

• Language-Based Soloing (Part 1)

Language-Based Soloing (Part 2) was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

When I ask what’s wrong, the answer is always the same: “I don’t know what to do!”

Over the years I’ve been teaching (33 so far, and still having way too much fun to stop!) I’ve developed an approach that solves this problem with almost all students. I can’t take the credit for this – my kids helped me with my homework.

My youngest son now towers over me – he’s got me by a good eight inches in height. But I still remember when he was just a tiny thing, and starting to learn about his world. The thing that really helped my teaching was him learning to talk.

Children start talking by imitating. Momma hold the little one and says “mama” over and over. After ten thousand or so repetitions, the little one gurgles something that might sound a little bit like what she’s saying. Mama’s pleased. The little one notices. “Mama” starts tumbling from the little one’s lips whenever he or she wants someone to fuss over him or her. A linguist is born.

I remember wearing out the grooves in my Led Zeppelin albums, playing them over and over trying to imitate the sounds. Just like our little linguist, I had no idea what Jimmy was actually doing. But I tried and tried to imitate what I thought it sounded like, and every once in a while I’d succeed a bit – at least enough so I’d feel good. Music and language aren’t very different.

Just like Junior, I wasn’t really saying anything. I was just imitating, and not understanding what I was doing. But a lot of good guitarists started soloing just like I did. They imitate what they hear, and eventually internalize the sounds they make. It’s a long process – think about how long it took you to learn to speak, to build up a reasonable vocabulary. Years, right? Maybe you still stop to look up a word now and then (I know I still do, and I’ve been speaking English for quite a while). It’s a long road, and you’re never quite done.

Let’s skip ahead a bit in the child’s development. The big leap comes when he or she starts actually communicating – the point where the child figures out that they can ask for something.

And that starts with one word. It doesn’t even matter what that one word is! Your little one might say “want!” (and point to something), or “give!” (and point to something), or “now!” (and point to something). Whatever word they choose, they’ve communicated. This marks a massive shift in development: they’ve gone from using a word to gain approval to using one word to say something!

Saying something with music is what soloing is all about. When my kids reached that stage, I had one of those “Aha!” moments, and it changed the way I teach.

Think about how most teachers teach soloing: they show you a scale fingering, and say “now play”. I wouldn’t dream of tossing a two year old a dictionary and saying “just put together the words you want”. We’re giving too much information to be truly useful. Our students end up struggling in a ‘poke and pray’ manner, trying to find the combination that works right – and if they do, struggling some more to understand why it was right.

I know you’re not two years old. You might have learned a scale fingering or two (or ten or twenty), but I can assure you that taking the big step back to the very beginning of language acquisition will change the way you solo: you’ll be more deliberate about it, and actually communicate in music.

It starts with one word. In a musical context, that means it starts with one note. Every solo has to start somewhere, right? So start with one note. And stay on that one note. See what you can do with it.

I had an improvisation teacher in college who had me solo over five choruses of the blues using a single note. I hated the exercise. But I also had to admit it made me better. At the time, I thought he was getting me to focus on rhythm alone; it wasn’t until more than ten years later, when my oldest child began to talk, that I realized what he was doing: he was teaching me to speak in music.

One word = one note.

I want you to start by putting on a backing track. You’ll take any note from a scale you know “should” work over the chord progression, and you’ll use that note exclusively. But before you start, I want you to close your eyes and think about how a small child uses one word… they may say “give” (and point) with a soft, trembling, quiet voice and pleading eyes… or they may say “Give!” (and point, and stamp their feet and cry). They may fall sobbing to the floor, repeating “give, give, give….”.

Your note is your “give”, or your “now”, or your “want”, or your “need”, or your “mine”, or whatever other image works. Picture in your mind’s eye how many ways you can use that one word in different ways.

Now play. Wring everything you can out of that one note – rhythm, volume, duration of the sound, timbre (the quality of the tone). I’ll wait.

How did that feel?

I’ll bet you got to know that one note better than you ever have. You’ve explored some of the possibilities. You’ve made it your friend. You now know what that note can do.

Editor’s note: If you’re interested in more on soloing, be sure to check out the Guitar Noise page on Solos. After reading this essay from Tom, you might find our series on “From Scales to Solos,” Part 2 will be particularly helpful in preparing you for the second part of Tom’s series.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 11 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More on Language-Based Soloing

• Language-Based Soloing (Part 2)

Language-Based Soloing (Part 1) was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

First, you’ll need to practice with a metronome. A metronome is a great way to measure your progress, and it helps keep your rhythm honest – you don’t want to become sloppy as the speed increases.

A metronome is useful for two types of drills. The first, which I call ‘laddering’ involves playing with a metronome at a given speed until you can play a drill perfectly. At that point, you’ll increase the speed of the metronome clicks, and start over again. Metronomes come in two basic flavors: mechanical and digital. Mechanical metronomes are basically clocks with a sliding weight that allows you to adjust the speed of the ‘click’ it produces; they typically have divisions ranging from 40bpm (beats per minute) to 208bpm. Digital metronomes, which are available as stand-alone battery or electric units, and as software for computers or iPhones. They can have various whistles and bells – literally. I’ve got one that rings a bell for beat one, and clicks on the other beats in various time signatures. Some will give you other sounds for divisions or subdivisions of a beat, and some will give you the option of a flashing light to accompany the click.

In a laddering drill, you might practice at 60bpm until you have a pattern down solidly, then move to 63, 66, 69, 72, 80, and so on. When you reach the top end of the metronome’s range, just cut the time in half and use subdivisions – eighth notes at 208 are the same speed as 16th notes at 104, so you can start there and move up to 108 and keep building your speed.

The other type of drill is one I call “leaping.” This will build your speed faster than laddering, but there’s a downside: because it forces your speed along, it also risks introducing sloppy behavior. I’d advise doing this leaping strategy only periodically – twice a week at most; the rest of your speed drills should be done with laddering, where you can focus better on your technique.

In a leaping drill, you start by playing at a speed you’re comfortable with. Then adjust the metronome to TWICE that speed and try it again. You won’t be able to keep up. Do your best with it, but just do it ONCE. Then set the metronome to slightly faster than your starting speed – if you started at 80bpm, try it at 84. You might find that you can now play it – in contrast to the frantic pace you were just trying to play, 84 seems a lot slower, even if 80 was your best effort to date. If you can play it properly at 84, leap up to 160 again and try it ONCE. Then try it at 88 – if you succeed, keep repeating until you find the speed where you fall apart.

If you make a mistake at the slower speed, stop! You don’t want to be practicing your mistakes and making them habits! Instead, go back to your original speed (80bpm in this example) and start over.

Finally, keep a log of your progress. Jot down the exercises you did, and the speeds you’ve achieved. That will give you a record of your achievements, and that can help you keep at it when you hit the inevitable plateaus.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 9 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 4

Speed Secrets – Part 5 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
-----------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
---------------------------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7- etc.

Repeat this drill with each finger combination. Your top speed will be slightly less than it was practicing on a single string, but over time the difference won’t be a noticeable one.

With this much technique development under your belt, you can turn to scale runs. The difference between the simple drills shown above and most scale patterns is the number of notes on a string – if there are three notes, your hand will end up in the wrong place to pick the next note. Here’s a C major scale in 7th position:

----------------------------------7-8-
---------------------------8-10------
--------------------7-9-10----------
-------------7-9-10-----------------
------7-8-10------------------------
-8-10-------------------------------

Strive for accuracy as you play. Remember everything we’ve covered so far, and focus on keeping your motions as small as possible in both hands, and stay relaxed.

As you played through that exercise, you’ll find your top speed is not as fast as it was with the earlier drills. That’s partly due to more complex fretting hand movements, but it’s also a result of your pick being in the wrong place for the next stroke – if you start with a downstroke, the third note on the fifth string will be a downstroke – which means you’ll now have to move PAST the fourth string in order to maintain alternate picking. We can eliminate this motion through economy picking, but before we get there I’ll digress into string skipping; economy picking takes some effort to develop, and you’ll need string skipping in your bag of tricks to play most solos.

Many solos or runs, or at least some of the more interesting ones, have notes on non-adjacent strings. You’ll need to avoid the string(s) in between, and that presents a couple of new challenges.

When you’re skipping strings, your hands have to cover a greater distance between notes. As a result, your top speed for string skipping will be slightly less than going full out on a scale run, but with practice the difference can become manageable.

To practice string skipping, I like to alternate scale runs with a fixed note, called a pedal point. This example uses a 1st string pedal G note on an open position C scale – the scale note is a down stroke, the first string is always an upstroke:

---3---3---3---3---3---3---3----3---3---3---3---3----
-------------------------0---1---0---------------------------
-----------------0---2---------------2---0------------------
-----0---2---3-------------------------------3---2---0----
-3----------------------------------------------------------3-
----------------------------------------------------------------

For a drill that’s a little tougher, make the skip to an inside string. This exercise is an open G scale against a 2nd string D pedal. Put your third finger on the D note – you’ll need your fourth finger free to hit the F# on the fourth string:

-
---3---3----3----3----3----3---3-
-----------------------------0------
-----------------0----2----4--------
-----0---2----3---------------------
-3------------------------------------- etc

Ok, back to solving the problem of the pick being out of position for the next note. A faster approach to runs like this is to shift to economy, or directional picking. Here ‘economy’ refers to economy of motion – and ‘directional’ is how you achieve it: if your pick is moving in the direction of the next note you’ll need to play, you simply continue in that direction, playing two notes in a row with the same stroke. I’d advise you not to start working on this until you’re very comfortable with alternate picking – otherwise you’ll find it more confusing, and perhaps counter-productive.

Here’s the same C major scale done with economy picking. The ‘D’ and ‘U’ notations show how your pick is moving:

D U D U D D U D D U D D U D U
--------------------------------7-8-
---------------------------8-10-----
--------------------7-9-10----------
-------------7-9-10-----------------
------7-8-10------------------------
-8-10-------------------------------

Finally, we come to sweep picking. Sweep picking is basically a slow-motion strum, with all downstrokes or upstrokes across the strings. If more than one note is sounded on a string, the second (and any additional) notes are sounded by hammer-ons and pull-offs. The trick to sweeping well is deadening the strings that aren’t needed. As this technique requires a bit more explanation, I’d suggest checking out some of the instruction videos available for it on YouTube and other websites – but I’d hold off until you’ve gotten the above techniques down.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 8 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 4 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Fretting hand motions can be broken down into notes on a single string, notes on strings in order (as in a scale run), and string skipping. Picking hand motions fall into four categories: uni-directional, alternate picking, economy (or ‘directional’) picking, and sweep picking.

All uni-directional picking is technically limiting, because you have to bring the pick back into playing position between each note. Because of this, most players wouldn’t consider it ‘speed picking’. But this type of picking is stylistically demanded for certain genres – punk rock is often all downstrokes, and reggae can make use of all upstrokes for extended periods of time. If that’s the kind of music you play, you’ll want to practice increasing your recovery time – the amount of time it takes you to ‘reset’ your hand for the next note. The key here is slow practice, focusing on moving the pick as little as possible to get through the strings – plural, because in punk it’s two- or three-string power chords, and in reggae it’s typically three-string voicings on the highest strings. On the recovery stroke, focus on brining your hand up or down ONLY as far as you need to for the next attack.

Alternate picking is theoretically twice as fast as uni-directional picking, because you’ll produce an additional note on the recovery stroke. It’s also a prerequisite for economy picking, so you’ll want to spend a fair amount of your speed work on alternate picking drills. To illustrate developing this technique, we’ll combine it with our first fretting hand category, notes on a single string.

Pick any spot on the neck and place your index finger on a fret. You’ll downstroke this note; as soon as you’ve played it, your pick will reverse direction, and you’ll play the same string with an upstroke – but you’ll play the note at the next fret with your second finger. Here I’ve illustrated this drill in fifth position:

-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-

Once you’re comfortable with this approach, you’ll use metronome drills to increase your speed. I’ll cover using a metronome in a future part of this series.

It’s important to develop your speed in all of your fingers, and you’ll want to use it with any combination of fingers that a passage might require. Using two fingers, there are six possibilities: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, and 3-4. Practice each combination on a single string. The hardest ones will be 1-4, 2-4, and 3-4; be sure you stop if your hand starts to cramp up!

One more thing before forging ahead: you’ll want to do these drills two different ways: holding down the first finger, and lifting the first finger as you play the second note. Keeping the original finger down is easy to master, but it can be limiting depending on your melody – there will be plenty of times you’ll need that finger on another string for the next note, and lifting it as soon as you can makes it easier to get that next note in time. In actual performance, you’ll keep the finger down when you return to the same note, and you’ll lift it if you need that finger for the next note. So be sure to prepare yourself by practicing it both ways!

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 7 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 3 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One of the keys to staying relaxed when you’re playing fast is using the correct muscles to drive the pick. Picking strings can be done with three different sets of muscles: the fingers, the wrist, or the forearm.

Picking with the fingers alone involves holding the hand stationary, and moving the pick up and down using only the motion of the thumb going down, and the index finger going up. The muscles used to create this picking motion are largely those in the hand and fingers. This approach is most useful for slow, quiet passages, or for very short runs – I’ll use this technique for things like a quick subdivision, where I’m playing 3-5 notes in the space of a half of a beat.

Picking from the wrist keeps the arm stationary, but moves the hand up and down over the strings. When you pick from the wrist, you’re using the larger muscles of the forearm instead of those of the hand and fingers – and bigger muscles don’t get tired as quickly. Wrist picking probably accounts for 85% or more of the picking I do, and it’s probably where you’ll spend most of your time practicing.

Picking from the forearm transfers the workload even farther up, and uses mostly the bicep and triceps muscles to drive the pick. This is done by ‘locking’ the wrist, and making the motion from the elbow. Since these are the largest muscles you can use in picking, they can handle the most sustained effort. This approach is best for tremolo picking, and it’s also useful for sweep picking.

To practice the various techniques and make them habit, it’s best to isolate the picking hand at first. That means you’ll practice while repeating a single note (which can even be an open string if you’d like). This is where you’ll eventually discover your ultimate top speed, as you’ll never be able to pick a complicated run any faster than you’ll be able to move the pick back and forth across a single string.

After you’ve decided what muscles you’ll use for the exercise, concentrate on staying loose. If you find you’re becoming tense, slow down! A useful exercise for developing your speed by staying loose is one I borrowed from the ‘fartlek’ (speed play) training that runners do: you’ll start picking slowly, build up the speed, back off a bit, and repeat. A typical drill for this sort of practice might look like this:

• 50% speed for 10 seconds
• 75% speed for 5 seconds
• 90% speed for 5 seconds
• 75% speed for 10 seconds
• 90% speed for 10 seconds
• 100% speed for 5 seconds
• 75% speed for 5 seconds
• 50% speed for 10 seconds

Notice that the drill takes just one minute. After that, shake out your picking arm, relax for a minute or so, and then repeat it. As with slow practice, you want to be focused on your goal: changing speed without increasing the tension in your muscles.

You’ll also want to devote some practice sessions to eliminating tension in your fretting hand. Many players tend to increase the force of their fingers when they increase the speed, and this creates tension that ultimately limits your top speed. Playing fast requires a light touch; your fingers need to dance across the fretboard, not stomp on the strings. Fartlek type drills can be useful for this; just concentrate on using as light a touch as possible without sacrificing your tone – it’s probably a lot less pressure than you think.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 5 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 2 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In this brief series, I’m going to reveal some of the ways you can make your playing speed faster – in fact, most guitarists will be able to play MUCH faster in a relatively short period of time.

In my teaching, I’ve noticed three barriers to developing speed: excess motion, excess tension, and a lack of coordination between the hands. Excluding virtuosi, we all suffer from one or more of these barriers. We’ll deal with them one at a time.

Excess motion is moving your fingers (or your pick, which I’ll get to in a moment) farther than you have to in executing a series of notes. Distance equals time: the more you lift your fingers, the harder you’ll have to work to achieve the same speed. If you lift your fingers one inch off the strings, your fingers must move EIGHT TIMES faster than a guitarist who only lifts an eighth of an inch!

You’ve probably heard the maxim ‘you learn to play fast by playing slow’. What this really means is rarely explained: playing slowly allows you to focus on your technique. Repeating a technical drill over and over at a very slow speed lets you build a habit, and once you have a habit ingrained, it becomes second nature – it’s what you’ll naturally do every time you play.

As you work through scales and other exercises you’ll find or develop on your own, start by slowing down… WAY down. 30-50% of your top speed is probably about right. Watch your fretting hand, and focus on keeping your fingers as close to the strings as possible. Don’t be impatient; it’s going to take a lot of slow practice sessions to make it habitual, so in the beginning I’d do only slow practice for a week or three before ramping up the tempo.

The picking hand needs the same attention, but in addition there’s a gear factor: the pick you choose. When I started working on developing my speed, I made the same mistake I’ve seen other guitarists make over and over – I switched to a thin pick, thinking it would move more easily through the strings.

As I got faster, I realized the problem with this thinking: thin picks are very flexible. As they pass through the string, they bend… and the point of the pick has to snap back into place before you can pick the next note. You’ll actually reach higher speeds with a stiff pick.

Since heavy picks are harder to force through the string, you’ll probably have to make an adjustment or two in how your pick hits the strings. The more pick you’re using (i.e., the farther your pick extends through the plane of the strings as you play), the more resistance there’s going to be. Devote some of your practice time to focusing on your picking hand, and trying to minimize the amount of pick you use – an eighth of an inch, or even less, is enough to get the string to sound.

Another adjustment you can make is to ‘cock’ your grip – instead of holding the pick parallel to the string, strike at an angle… the edge of the pick should be the surface hitting the string. This lets the rounded point glide across the string, instead of having to forcing the face of the pick through it.

To get the correct grip for this, start by holding the pick flat against a string. Without changing the placement of your hand, tip the point of your thumb either up or down; that will rotate the pick slightly, and you’ll be presenting the edge of the pick to the string. I cock my thumb down, but I know a few guitarists who are more comfortable cocking it up, bending the thumb joint slightly backward. Either way will result in less resistance than striking the string ‘flat’ with the pick.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 4 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 1 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Practicing frequently (several times a day for just a few minutes at a time) will produce better results than practicing for a long time every few days.

It’s not how much time you put in; it’s how much you put into your time. Focused practice can accomplish a lot efficiently – but wiggling your fingers around while your mind drifts really isn’t practicing!

If you practice as early as you can – even right after you get up in the morning – you won’t be as likely to miss any practice sessions. And if you feel like it, you can always get in an extra practice session later on in the day.

The ability to play an instrument builds one skill on top of others. Make sure you get the fundamentals right.

Review should be part of your practice routine. When you learned to read, you probably had a favorite book you read hundreds of times – learning to read music takes the same kind of review.

Try to practice for a few minutes right after a lesson – it will help you remember little details.

Muscle memory is developed through repetition. An amateur practices until they get it right; a professional practices until they never get it wrong!

Try to sing what you play. It will help you develop your ear and improve the results you get from practicing.

The first time you play a piece, keep a pencil handy. Mark the spots you have trouble with – those are the ones you should put the most practice time into!

Break complex passages down into smaller bites and work through each one before trying to put the whole thing together.

There’s a difference between practicing and rehearsing, and between practicing and playing. Approach each session understanding what your purpose is.

There is a best time of the day to practice, but it depends on you. Pay attention to the results you get at different times of the day, and try to practice during your most productive times.

Practice slowly enough so you’re not making any mistakes. Practice doesn’t make perfect – practice makes permanent – so don’t waste your time practicing mistakes!

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academy in Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 1 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

How to Practice Your Musical Instrument was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

1. The right to control publishing – that is, printed reproductions of your music. That’s called publishing rights
2. The right to income from public performances of your work. That’s called performance rights.
3. The right to income from YOUR recorded version of a piece. That’s called mechanical rights.

There are some other rights attached to works too… like synchronization rights (the right to allow or refuse your music to be included with images like movies or commercials), and the right to control the FIRST released recording – famously, Bob Dylan refused himself permission to release his new songs in a negotiation showdown with a label some years back.

These rights are usually split up and controlled by various entities. The publishing rights are usually held by a publishing company, the performance rights are usually handled by a performance rights organization, and the mechanical rights are usually controlled by the label.

When a cover band performs, there’s no infringement on publishing rights, because it’s not being published, and unless the performance is being recorded for release, there’s no mechanical rights involved. That leaves performance rights.

The three big performance rights organizations are BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. They each license venues and promoters to publicly perform anything in their catalog. “Perform” is a big tent – if a bar buys a jukebox, they’re supposed to license the music that’s in it. If a radio station plays music, they need a license. So do websites with music and symphony orchestras – unless they only perform public domain stuff.

When a cover band plays in a bar, the bar owner is supposed to have a current license for the music, and the performing rights organizations send folks out to listen to music in bars and other venues to see if any of their catalog is being played. If it is, and the bar hasn’t licensed it, they’ll threaten legal action. (About 30 years ago I was playing in a cover band and a BMI rep came into the bar – the show was halted while the owner worked out a licensing deal!)

The license fee depends on the size of the venue, and how often they have music – it runs from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year, typically. Some venue owners skirt this by requiring bands play only original music. If push came to shove, I suppose a band might be held accountable, but in practical terms…. well, if a bar pays $2K per year to license music on weekends, the band’s pro-rated slice is pretty small. Plus, bars have better cash flow than your average band – so they’re a much better target if it comes to litigation. (It almost always doesn’t – the performing rights organizations really bank on persuasion as a strategy, unlike the trade groups for publishing (the MPA) and mechanicals (the RIAA).

What is the deal with music rights? was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

We’ve used ledger lines for the notes low E through fifth string C… we can also add ledger lines on the other side, above the staff. Just like the lower ledger lines, these will extend the musical alphabet:

We’ll be needing those ledger lines as we move into higher positions – for right now, you just need to know it can be done at either end of the staff.

Standard notation isn’t just about notes, though – it conveys all sorts of other information through special symbols. In the last lesson, I mentioned that the end of a section is often marked with a double bar:

The end of a piece is also marked with a double bar, but the second bar is thicker:

There’s also a sign where an end-of-piece double bar has two dots in front of it – that’s called a repeat sign:

That’s sort of a traffic signal in standard notation – it’s going to send you on a detour to some other place in the music. If that’s the only repeat sign you’ve come across, it means at that point you’ll go back to the very beginning, and play all those measures a second time. The second time you get to the repeat sign, you ignore it and keep going.

Sometimes the composer won’t want you to go all the way back to the beginning. In that case, repeat signs come in pairs, like in this example:

Here you’d play measure 1, then measures 2 and 3… and then repeat measures 2 and 3… and finally play measure 4. It’s a nice, compact way to write music – 6 bars of sound take up only 4 bars on the page.

You’ll also notice the time signature is 2/4. There’s no real limit on the number of beats that can be in one measure – the minimum is just one; some time signatures will call for 15 or more per measure.

Sometimes you’ll see repeat signs with numbers and brackets over them, like this:

This one’s a little different. At the repeat sign, you return to the beginning (since there’s no repeat in the opposite direction)… but the next time through, you skip any measures under the ’1′ bracket, and go right to the ’2′ bracket. In this case, you’d play measures 1, 2, 1 again, and then 3. There’s no limit to the number of different endings you can have – I’ve seen music with five different repeat endings, and there are probably pieces written with even more.

There are a few other directional signals you’ll see often in standard notation. The first is D.C.:

In this example, you’ve got a measure, then two measures repeated once, then one more measure with a repeat sign – and the symbol D.C. written above it. The D.C. is an abbreviation for an Italian term, ‘da capo’, which means ‘from the head’. When you see that, you go back to the beginning of the piece.

Many guitarists mispronounce da capo, because it looks so much like capo. The D.C. term is dah-KAH-po; the thing you use to change keys is a KAY-po.

You’ll often see D.C. combined with the term ‘al fine’, which means ‘to the end’. When you see that, there will be the word ‘fine’ (pronounced fee-NAY or fih-NAY-ee, meaning end) somewhere above the staff, usually over a double bar. You’d then go from the instruction ‘D.C. al fine’ to the beginning (D.C.) and play until you reach the double bar marked ‘fine’.

By the way, Italian is the standard language of music. By the end of these lessons, you’ll know a whole bunch of Italian words!

A closely related symbol is D.S., which is an abbreviation for ‘dal segno’ (doll SAYN-yo, from the sign). That’s always combined with this symbol somewhere in the music:

When you see D.S. over a repeat sign, you find the symbol, and play from that point in the music.

You can actually have a double segno sign too – and the instruction for finding that would be D.S.S. – but it’s really rare.

Finally, there’s the coda (KO-duh), which is used pretty often. Coda is Italian for ‘tail’, so it’s a piece of music that will come at the tail end of a song. Somewhere in the music will be a coda symbol,

and somewhere else will be an instruction above a repeat sign – it’ll say “D.C. al coda” or “D.S. al coda”. When you reach that instruction, you’ll go back to the beginning (D.C.) or back to the sign (D.S.), and you’ll play until you reach the coda symbol – at that point, you’ll jump to the coda section, which is written at the end of the music. Most publishers will place a second coda sign over the beginning of the coda section to help you find it quickly, and most will separate it slightly from the main body of the music, or begin the coda on a new line.

Here’s the same music I used for the numbered ending example re-written to use the coda instead:

Like the segno, you can have a second coda – noted with

but like the double segno it’s extremely rare.

Now that you know some of the navigational symbols used, let’s get back to reading!

The letter-named notes leave some gaps in the fretboard. To fill those gaps, we use the symbols # (sharp) and b (flat). If you see a sharp, the note will be played one fret higher, and if you see a flat, the note will be played one fret lower.

The bar line between measures serves as a ‘reset’ button for sharps and flats. So when you see this:

The first measure is E-F-F#-G, played open-1-2-3 on the first string. In the second measure, the notes are E-F-G… because we’ve had a bar line, the F# note has been ‘reset’ to F.

At times, we’ll want to use a note like F#, and then use F without the sharp – which is called F natural – before we get to a bar line. To change a sharp or flat back to a natural before a measure is over, we use a natural sign, which looks like this:

Here’s a measure with F-F#-F#-F, and a second measure with B-Bb-B-Bb:

A couple things about this measure… in the first measure, the third note doesn’t have an accidental. It’s still an F# note, because the sharp for the second note keeps on working until the bar line – unless we use a natural sign, which doesn’t happen until beat four.

Next, the second measure… the B note is the open second string. Bb has to be one fret lower than that, so you’ll need to move to the third string, third fret to play it.

We usually use sharps going up and flats going down… that keeps the music clear by minimizing the number of naturals we might need. Here’s the entire chromatic scale in the first position going up:

And going down:

Accidentals are used often in minor keys, because the harmonic and melodic minor scales use notes ‘outside’ the key. Here’s the C major scale:

The A natural minor scale uses the same notes, but with A as the root:

The other two minor scales alter tones… the harmonic minor raises the seventh note:

And the melodic minor scale raises the sixth and seventh notes going up, but not going down (the natural signs aren’t required because the bar lines cancel the sharps, but I’ve included them as a reminder):

So far we’ve only done one note at a time. That’s fine for noting many solos, but it doesn’t do much for rhythm parts. The solution is to put more than one note head on a stem, like this:

The first beat includes a C note (first fret, second string) and an E note (open first string), so you’d play those two strings together. The next beat has the open B and E strings played together, and the third beat has a five-string open C major chord.

So notes can have one head for a single note, two for a double stop, or three to six for a chord. Beginning readers find it rather hard to navigate chords… but that’s because they try to read one note at a time. You don’t actually have to read each note in a chord – the real trick is to recognize what chords go with each key.

You’ll notice that C major chord doesn’t have any accidentals, so all of the notes must be in C. Working with just basic chords, each major key will have one 7th chord, two major chords, and three minor chords – here are the chords in the key of C major:

Now I’ll show you a trick for instantly (or at least quickly) recognizing the basic chords without accidentals. See how most of those chords have three notes grouped closely together – one in every space or line? Those three notes form a triad – the basis for the chord. When you see that, the lowest note of the three is the root of the triad. So when you see this:

You’re dealing with a C chord type – that’s the lowest note in the set of three. Now, if you know the basic chords in C, you can pretty quickly pick out the triads. The one to be careful of is the G/G7 chords – the top note will tell you the difference:

That means you’ve got most of the basic chords in C down ‘at sight’ – spend a little time working at remembering the Dm chord and you’re all set for this key in open position. I’ll show you more tricks as we get into higher positions and more complicated chords.

The key of A minor is really just as easy – chords in A minor, at least in simple songs, usually use only the G# accidental, and usually only in the E rooted chord. If you’re in Am, and you see a chord with a sharp and an E root, it’s usually E7.:

Chords are often combined with bass notes. The result is music with two voices – one is the melody created by the bass line, the other is the rhythmic accompaniment of the chord strums. To keep things clear, the music is written as two separate lines, typically with stems in opposite directions – when there is a bass note, there’s a rest in the chord strum, like this:

You’re probably wondering why the bass notes wouldn’t simply be written as quarter notes… if they were written that way, they’d only get one beat, so you’d need to dampen them at the second beat in each measure. Here we’re letting the bass notes ring, and if we didn’t use the rest to show it’s two separate lines, you’d end up with five beats worth of notes in each measure.

One last thing for this lesson – key signatures. If you’re going to apply a sharp or a flat to the same note throughout an entire piece of music, and that note will rarely appear without the accidental, it’s easiest to just write it once, in the beginning.

Let’s say you’re working in the key of G. The G major scale is G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G, so you’ll probably have almost all of the F notes in the piece raised to F#. In the very beginning – after the clef, but before the time signature – you write F# on the top line:

This sharp (or sharps, or flat or flats) is called a key signature. The advantage to using a key signature is that you won’t clutter up the music with a lot of accidentals – instead of writing this:

You’d have this:

Since all the F notes are now F#, some of the chords you’ve learned will be a little different… the main chords in the key of G are:

The really tricky one here is the D major – it’s written identically to the D minor chord in the key of C! With a bit of practice, though, you’ll recognize these odd chords right away, and the triad rule still holds for the open position key of G:

Reading in key signatures takes some practice, because you have to remember to sharp or flat all the indicated notes. We’ll take the keys one at a time, and I’ll put a practice piece at the end of each lesson for you to work on.

Since the holidays are drawing near, have fun with my little arrangement of Jingle Bells:

Also check out… Standard Notation Part 1

Standard Notation – Part 2 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

We’ll start with some basics:

What is a chord substitution?

It’s using one chord in place of another (or part of another) in a chord progression.

Why would you want to substitute a chord?

Well, you might have a progression that sounds good, but you want to see if it can sound better. Substituting chords can dress things up a bit. Or if you’re playing in a highly improvisational format, changing a chord to something close is one way to throw ideas at the soloist.

How does chord substitution work?

In two major ways: first, the chord might be close to the original – so it sounds ‘mostly’ right. If the chord called for is C major (made of C-E-G notes), you might try A minor (A-C-E) or E minor (E-G-B), which each have two of the same notes… it’s the one note that’s different which makes it a substitution. This is easiest to see in standard notation:

In the second way, the chord is different from the original, but leads naturally into it. These substitutions are usually for just part of the duration. In the following example, F major is played for two bars in the original progression. You might try C7 for the first bar, and F major for the second bar. The C7 naturally resolves to F, so even if the C7 is a bit of a leap from where you ‘should’ be in the progression, it leads you right back to the path you were originally on.

Original:

Substitution:

Now that we’ve covered the basics, I’ll go through fourteen different substitution ideas, and why each one works.

#1: Chord extensions . You can always add things to the core notes of a chord – playing C6 instead of C, or G9 instead of G7. Since all of the notes of the original chord are also in the substitution, they retain the original idea of the harmony. The one thing to pay attention to is the seventh note of the chord – if it’s a dominant chord to begin with (having a b7 note), you’ll want to keep a b7 tone in the substitution. If it’s a major chord to begin with, you’ll want to add a major (natural) seventh if you use one. Minor chords are the switch hitters – you can extend them either way… choose the one that places the seventh (7 or b7) in key.

Original:

Substitution:

#2 – Chord simplifications . These are the opposite of extensions – you can use a diminished triad, like Bº (B-D-F) in place of a 7 th chord a major third lower – in this case, G7 (G-B-D-F). That works because the notes of the diminished triad are completely contained in the seventh chord:

Other simplifications can snag just a portion of the original chord – if D9 (D-F#-A-C-E) is called for, a D triad works… as does Am or F#º. Each of those has three tones out of the original chord’s five:

#3 – Chord suspensions . Suspended chords replace the third with a fourth, and that creates tension that wants to resolve – the fourth wants to move down a half step to the third. Use these for the first half of a chord – use Fsus-F-C or F-Csus-C in place of F-C.

Original:

Substitution:

#4 – Secondary Dominants . You can always use the dominant chord of your target for just part of the original chord’s duration. We did this with C7 and F just a little while ago, using a measure of each instead of playing two measures of F. This is called a secondary dominant, which I covered in an earlier article. Secondary dominants actually work for any chord in a progression, not just a dominant chord.

Original:

Substitution:

#5 – Relative majors and minors . If the original chord is minor, the major chord built on the third (C for an Am chord) will work as a chord substitution; if the original is major, the minor based on the sixth will work. In both cases, the substituted chord will have two of the original chord’s three tones:

#6 – Minor chords a third above a major . Like the relative minor (the sixth above a major), this chord will share two tones with the original:

#7 – Back and fourths (a term I invented to explain this one to students!) We’ve all seen how a blues progression moves I-IV-I before the V7-I cadence; you can use a chord of the same type, a fourth higher, for any chord – as long as you make a chord ‘sandwich’ (original-substitution-original). If the progression goes C-F-G7, you can play C-F-Bb-F-G7.

Original:

Substitution:

#8 – Diminished 7 th chords a third above a dominant chord . Since the simplification of a seventh chord into a diminished triad (substituting B-D-F for G-B-D-F) works, you can combine the simplification and extension to create a new substitution – using Bº7 (1-3-5-bb7, or B-D-F-Ab). The new chord will share three tones with the original.

#9 – Dominant 7 th chords a minor third above a dominant chord . This one will share two tones – instead of G7 (G-B-D-F), you’d play Bb7 (Bb-D-F-Ab). You still have two tones in common. I’m showing this chord inverted, so you can more easily see how close they are:

#10 – The tritone substitution . A tritone is three whole steps from the original chord. If the original is dominant – a 7 th , 9 th , 11 th , or 13 th chord – you can use any dominant chord that’s three whole steps up from the root of the original.

For example, if the original is G7 (G-B-D-F), a tritone up from G is C# – so you could use C#7, or the enharmonic Db7 instead (Db-F-Ab-C). This works for a couple of reasons… first, the new chord shares two tones with the old one; second (and really cool – one reason this substitution is used so often in jazz!), the new chord will almost always blend into the chords on either side by half steps.

Let’s say the original change is Dm-G7-C. We plug in Db7 instead of G7… and now the roots move chromatically, D-Db-C. You’ve got one tone in Db that’s ‘connected’ to the chord on each side – F is in the Dm chord, and C is in the C chord – and even the Ab makes for chromatic steps A-Ab-G moving from the Dm chord to the C!

I’ll show the G7 and Db7 chords inverted, so you can more easily see the chromatic movement:

#11 – m7b5 chords a fifth above in place of a dominant chord . Instead of using G7 (G-B-D-F), you can use Dm7b5 (D-F-Ab-C). Again, you have two common tones from the original chord – the Dm7b5 is shown inverted to highlight the similarity:

#12 – m7 ai fifth higher than a dominant (for part of a change) . This actually turns a V-I progression into ii-V-I, a very common jazz progression. Instead of using G7-C, you can use Dm7-G7-C.

Original:

Substitution:

#13 – Dominant alterations . These start getting tricky… when you have a dominant chord in the chart, you can place b5, #5, b9, or #9 in the chord. It’s best to establish the original chord first , then do your substitution. C7-F can become C7-C7b5-F, or C7-C7+-F, or C7-C7b9-F, etc. These work best when the dominant chord is going to resolve down a fifth. For more on altered chords, see my article “Altered States”.

#14 – Stepping . Most chords can be ‘stepped into’ chromatically – you can substitute C-Ab7-G7 or A-F#7-G7 for a C-G7 change. You can actually over/under shoot your chord by quite a ways and still step into it, if you treat the change carefully… C-B7-Bb7-A7-Ab7-G7 can be made to work under the right circumstances.

Although stepping chromatically is the most common of this fairly rare type of substitution, it’s not the only choice – altered dominants work well when stepped into by whole steps, as in C-A7#9-G7#9-G7 for a C-G7 change. Unaltered dominants will even work when stepped into by minor thirds – you can use C-Bb7-G7 instead of C-G7.

You can even combine stepping with other substitutions – if you substitute an altered dominant, you can step into it by a whole step, like this:

Original:

Substitution:

Chord substitutions don’t come easily, and they don’t come naturally to most players. Don’t be afraid to experiment in your practice sessions – eventually you’ll be taking chords in unexpected directions, and resolving them to the original progression.

Also in this Series

• Untangling Chord Progressions
• Extended Chords
• Altered States
  

Chord Substitution was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Oh yeah – the illustrations are copyright 2002 by NoteBoat Inc. (my publishing company) because I’m basically just cropping artwork that appeared in my theory book… the ones labeled “Exercise #…” are created for this article, and are copyright Tom Serb 2005.

First a few preliminaries for those of you unfamiliar with standard notation…

Standard notation is written on a set of five horizontal lines called the staff:

Guitar music is usually written using a treble clef, which looks like this:

The purpose of a clef is to identify the names of the lines and spaces. Each line or space will represent one letter of the musical alphabet, which is the letters A through G. Using the treble clef, the lines are (from the bottom up): E-G-B-D-F, which you can remember using the mnemonic Every Good Boy Does Fine. The spaces, from the bottom up, spell out the word F-A-C-E. Combining these two, we can write the notes from E through F on the staff:

Standard notation is very visual: the higher a note is on the staff, the higher it will sound.

Notes are symbols that indicate how long a sound lasts. Notes are made up of one or more of three basic parts: a head, a stem, and flags or beams.

The head of a note is a roughly circular shape:

If a note has ONLY a head, the head is always hollow (as shown), and the note is called a whole note.

A stem can be added to a note. When a stem is used, the head can be either hollow or solid:

Notes with stems and hollow heads are called half notes; notes with stems and solid heads are called quarter notes.

Notes with solid heads can have flags:

Notes with one flag are called eighth notes.

We can keep adding flags to a note, getting sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes, and so on:

The shapes of notes tell us how long the sounds last. A half note lasts for half the time of a whole note, a quarter note lasts for half the time of a half note, and so on.

Music isn’t just made up of sounds, though – it’s also made up of the silences between sounds. We need rhythmic symbols to indicate how long to NOT play, and we call these symbols rests.

Each note has a corresponding rest… the ones at the far left are double-whole note/rest, which is pretty rare in notation; at the far right is the 128^th note, which is also rare:

Since the shape of the notes tell us how long they last – at least relative to each other – we can now start worrying about pitch. We can put notes on, immediately above, or immediately below the staff:

But that only gives us notes from D (below the bottom E line) through G (above the top F line). That’s eleven notes… and we can play a lot more than eleven different notes on the guitar.

To handle the ‘extra’ notes, we’ll use temporary extensions of the staff called ledger lines, and keep going higher or lower as needed:

Ledger lines are identified as if the staff just kept going:

We’re almost done with the preliminaries… just a few more things…

We know that a half note is half as long as a whole note, and twice as long as a quarter note – but we need to know what note represents one beat in order to count time. That’s shown by two numbers called a time signature that appears right after the clef. It looks sort of like a fraction, and it can come in a lot of different varieties:

To begin with, we’ll use only these three time signatures:

In each case, the bottom number is 4 – that tells us that a quarter note will get one beat. The top number tells us how many beats will be in each measure.

Measures in music are the space between ‘one’ counts. We set vertical lines called bar lines between measures in music to help us keep our place:

Since the time signature here is 4/4, there are four beats in each measure, and a quarter note represents one beat. There are four sixteenth notes to a quarter note… here the sixteenth note flags are joined together into beams, with each beamed set being one beat. After every fourth set of beamed notes is a vertical bar line, which helps us keep track of the ‘one’ count.

It’s common to use a double bar to indicate the end of a section or piece of music:

One last thing and we’ll start to play… the time signature 4/4 is so common in music that it’s sometimes indicated by the letter C. Musicians refer to this as ‘common time’… it’s not really a letter C, but that’s a music history lesson for another article. If you see C instead of a time signature, count it as 4/4.

Ok, so we’re done with the basic tools – you know the note shapes, the letter names of staff positions, what note gets one beat, and how many beats are in a measure. Time to pick up your guitar!

We’ll start with the first position, and take one string at a time. The notes on the first string, first position are E (open), F (first fret), and G (third fret). These correspond to the top space of the staff, E; the top line of the staff, F, and the note immediately above the top line, G:

Get comfortable with the idea that these notes represent the sounds of the open, first, and third frets of the first string… then play this:

Exercise 1

Make sure you’re getting the count right – the first note takes four beats, the next two notes two beats each, etc. Go slow – this takes time to read ‘at sight’.

Now let’s look at the second string. The open second string is the B note on the middle line of the staff; the first fret is the C note on the second space from the top; and the third fret D is the second line from the top:

Ready to read? Let’s go!

Exercise 2

And now let’s try both strings:

Exercise 3

Now let’s try another time signature… in 3/4 time we have notes that represent two beats or four beats, but we don’t have a note for three beats (one full measure of 3/4 time). The solution is to put a dot after a half note:

Dots after notes mean the original note value is extended by one half – a dotted half note is a half note (two beats in 3/4) plus half the value of the original note (one more beat in 3/4) for a total of three beats.

Ready for a stab at waltz time?

Exercise 4

There’s one other way we can extend note values, by using another rhythmic symbol called the tie. Ties are curved lines that connect two notes of the same pitch (we’ll have other names for curved lines that connect different pitches later on). This is a way we can write a note that lasts for an odd amount of time, like five beats. When you encounter a tie, you play the first note, and hold it for the value of both. In this example, the last note of the third measure is held until the third beat of the last measure:

Exercise 5

If we’d used a whole note to represent this sound – a whole note is also four beats – the third measure would have ended up with six beats… two too many. The solution is to split the note into two parts and connect them with a tie.

Now let’s add the third string. It’s only got two first position notes, the open G (second line from the bottom) and second fret A (second space from the bottom):

And let’s introduce another concept, partial measures… sometimes you’ll see a piece of music that doesn’t start on the ‘one’ count. To save space, publishers will often have an incomplete measure (less than the required number of beats) at the start of a piece or section. It used to be convention that the last measure of a piece like that would also be a partial measure – the first and last measures would add up to one full measure – but lately I’ve been seeing pieces that don’t end in a partial measure, so some publishers are discarding that convention. When you see a partial measure, start from the appropriate count; the next example will start on beat ‘three’.

At any rate, we’ve now got a full octave to play with, so let’s play!

Exercise 6

On to the fourth string; we’ve got three notes: the open string D is the first note below the staff; the second fret E is the bottom line of the staff; and the third fret F is the bottom space of the staff:

Let’s put together everything so far:

Exercise 7

Of course, we can divide beats… in 4/4 time, an eighth note represents one half beat (two notes to the beat). Publishers usually beam notes in beats or sets of beats – two beats in 4/4 time – to keep it easy to read. Count these notes “one-and-two-and-” etc.:

Exercise 8

Now we’ve reached the note below the staff… to go any lower we need to start using ledger lines. All the open position notes on the fifth and sixth strings will need these temporary extensions to the staff.

On the fifth string, we have the open A note (two ledger lines below the staff), the second fret B note (the space below the first ledger line beneath the staff) and the third fret C note (the first ledger line below the staff):

Exercise 9

The sixth string has three more notes in first position: the open E (the note beneath the third ledger line under the staff), the first fret F (on the third ledger line beneath the staff), and the third fret G (under the second ledger line below the staff):

Now we’ll introduce one more rhythmic twist: if we dot a quarter note in 4/4, we get a note that represents one and one-half beats. The next example includes dotted-quarter/eighth pairs, which are counted ONE-and-two-AND-THREE-and-four-AND. Give this a try:

Exercise 10

Well, that completes the strings in first position. There’s still a lot more to discover about standard notation, though… find some music, practice in this position, and in the next article I’ll explore accidentals, double stops, chords, and key signatures; after that, we’ll start moving up the neck to other positions.

Also check out… Standard Notation Part 2

Standard Notation was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Any note can be altered in a chord, but not all alterations will lead to an “altered chord.” That’s because we have easier ways of noting certain alterations – let’s look at each scale note in turn:

Roots – if the root is altered, the chord changes names. Chord names have two parts – the root name (given as a letter) and a quality name that describes what’s happening above the root. Since every chord is identified from the root, a C major chord with a raised root (C#-E-G) would be called a C# diminished chord; an F minor chord with a lowered root (Fb-Ab-C) becomes an augmented chord on the new root (E-G#-B#). Changing the root in a complex chord structure can lead to an altered chord, but it’s never the root that ends up as the alteration.

Seconds – in traditional harmony, chords are built in thirds. The second is the same note as the ninth – the note right after the octave – so it’s always called the ninth. Beginners make a common assumption that calling a note a ‘ninth’ means it’s in a different octave, but that’s not the case – it’s called a ninth even if it’s the lowest tone in a chord, and even if the root is in the same octave.

Ninths can be raised (#9) or lowered (b9).

If the ninth is used in a chord, you’ll also know if the chord contains a seventh – chords like C9 or Am9 always include a flatted seventh; chords like Bbmaj9 always include a natural seventh, and if there’s no seventh at all, it’s an ‘add9′ chord. You’ll sometimes see chords noted as ‘sus2′, which implies the third has been replaced by a second; although I disagree with this naming, that’s beyond the scope of this article – at least you’ll know what’s implied.

Thirds – if a third is lowered, the chord is called minor; if a third is raised, it’s the same tone as the fourth – a suspended chord. Since we have easier ways to indicate the alteration of a third, you’ll never see it altered.

Fourths – if you lower the fourth of a chord, you end up with the same note as the third. Consequently, you’ll never see a chord with b11 – chords that include both a natural third and a flatted third are written as a major chord with a #9. If the fourth is raised in a chord, it’ll be indicated as #11 or +11.

Fifths – these can lead to altered chords in half the cases. Raising the fifth in a major chord gives us an augmented chord (1-3-#5), and lowering the fifth in a minor chord gives us a diminished chord (1-b3-b5), so fifths can be an altered tone only if they’re raised in a minor chord (example: Cm7#5) or lowered in a major one (example: C7b5). In the past few years, the m7b5 has replaced the half diminished chord in most charts, so that’s the exception to the rule.

Sixths – These are only called sixths if there’s no seventh present. You should never see a ‘Cadd6′ chord – it’s simply C6. If the seventh is present in the chord, the sixth is called a 13th . Raising this note gives the same tone as a flatted seventh – and that’s implied in a 13th chord – so you’ll see b13, but not #13.

Sevenths – if a seventh is lowered, the result is a dominant chord, simply written with a number… lower the seventh of Cmaj7 and you get C7. Raising the seventh gives you the same note as the octave, so Cmaj7 with a raised 7th = C major.

Since that completes our tour of the notes, I’ll recap what can be altered:

• Root – never
• 2nd /9th – you’ll see b9 or #9
• Third – never
• 4th /11th – you’ll only see #11
• Fifth – sometimes; you’ll see b5 or #5
• 6th /13th – you’ll only see b13
• Seventh – never

That gives us a total of six altered notes: b9, #9, #11, b5, #5, and b13. Even better, the #11 and b5 are the same note – and so are the #5 and b13! That means all altered chord fingerings are going to have one or more of the following:

• The root tone raised one fret to make b9
• The third lowered one fret to make #9
• The fifth lowered one fret to make #11 or b5
• The fifth raised one fret to make #5 or b13

That’s it in a nutshell – four possibilities. Doesn’t seem quite so scary now, does it?

In my last article I talked about the importance of knowing where the basic chord tones are in voicings – here’s a quick review – roots are shown as squares:

If you’ve learned how to form extended chords, and you know the root, third, and fifth in each fingering, you can form any altered chord – no matter how complicated!

You’ll need to be careful about one thing, though – some voicings have notes doubled. In the first two diagrams, there are two fifths – if you alter one to make a b5 or #5 chord, you’ll need to get rid of (or change) the other one. Altered 9ths (b9 or #9) can include the natural third, and b13 chords include the fifth, so it’s only doubled fifths you’ll need to worry about, and only when the fifth is an altered tone.

One quick word about chord symbols before we dig into examples: a “+” means the same as a #… unless it’s at the end of a chord name; then it means a raised fifth. In other words, G9+ is 1-3-#5-b7-9; G7+9 is 1-3-5-b7-#9. You’ll see either plusses or sharps in chord names, and sometimes both (as in G7#11+). A minus sign doesn’t mean a flat, though… if you see one of those, it means the same as ‘minor’.

Now we’ll see how this works in practice… I’ll just show one possibility for each voicing – you can refer back to the extended chord article to construct others.

Am7b5

Start with one of the A seventh forms (see the article on extended chords), lower the third to get a minor, and lower the fifth to complete the chord:

E13#9

Lower third by one fret, or raise a root by three to get the #9 – having both the third and #9 in the voicing gives it the tension of that raised ninth. If you’re starting with a 13th chord that includes the ninth, just raise it a fret:

Bb7#9+

From a seventh form, lower a third by one fret (or raise the root by three if you’ve only got one third), then raise the fifth:

Fadd+11

To an F major chord, lower a fifth by one fret. You’ll want to use a voicing that begins with two fifths:

G7b9

Using a seventh form, raise the root by a fret:

(Did you notice that the top four notes of G7b9 form a diminished 7th? More on that in a minute!)

D7#9b5

From a seventh form, lower a third by one fret and lower the fifth by one:

Ok, I already hear some of you screaming that it can’t be – the 7b9 voicing is a diminished 7th, and the 7#9b5 I just showed is identical to the m7b5 fingering I gave earlier!

A couple of things about altered chords: first, they tend to have five or more tones if you played the ‘real’ voicing (many of which are unplayable on the guitar), and some tones are more important than others. It’s common to drop notes from altered chords, just as we did for extended chords. Let’s look at that last pair, the m7b5 and the 7#9b5. You’ve got:

Am7b5 = 1-b3-b5-b7 = A-C-Eb-G

and

A7#9b5 = 1-3-b5-b7-#9 = A-C#-Eb-G-B#

since B# is enharmonic to C, we can re-write that as A - C -C#- Eb - G … see how that actually contains the m7b5 tones?

Ah, but it won’t sound like a #9 without a natural third, will it? Well, you could use a voicing that includes both:

but you’ll be limited in the number of positions you’ll be able to play – and leaping all over the neck to grab the ‘right’ chord doesn’t lead to smooth changes.

The other big factor is context. Since it’s the 9th being altered, the odds are pretty good that the progression is leading your ear towards a major/dominant chord here – playing the minor will give you the #9, creating the effect in the context of the piece most of the time.

There are actually a few ‘cheats’ like this you can use. I find it easier to think about the altered chord tones since there are only four possible notes to alter, but you might prefer thinking of substitutions. Here’s a couple examples:

C7b9 = C-E-G-Bb-Db Gº7 = G-Bb-Db-E

C9#11 = C-E-G-Bb-D-F# Gm/maj7 = G-Bb-D-F#

Certain guitar voicings, because notes are left out, also work – if you look at the highest four notes in the last diagram you might recognize a voicing of Eb13:

A7#9b5 = A-C#-Eb-G-B# Eb13 = Eb - G -Bb-Db( C# )-F-Ab-C( B# )

Even though Eb13 is not really a substitute – the other three notes all clash with the A7#9b5 – the four notes in that particular voicing are a perfect fit!

You can even take simplification to extremes, grabbing the highest note, any altered ones, and whatever else fits…

C13b9 = C-E-G-Bb- Db -F- A Db+ = Db-F-A

but the more you take away, the more you’re trusting other instruments will fill in the blanks. If you’re at the point of knowing the notes in a 13b9 chord well enough to figure out the chords it contains, you didn’t need this article anyway!

In the next article I’ll talk about how altered chords are used as substitutions.

Also in this Series

• Untangling Chord Progressions
• Extended Chords
• Chord Substitution

Altered States was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Altered chords can be scary, because there’s so darn many of them! A major chord has only 3 different notes, so you can pretty well master the major chords by learning just 3-5 different fingerings. A 13th chord can theoretically have dozens of different fingerings – so it’s understandable that many intermediate guitarists figure enough is enough, they’ll just stay intermediate.

But getting to the stage of playing these advanced chords doesn’t really require learning hundreds of new chord shapes – it only demands that you can relate new chords to old ones in a logical way. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to form any chord extension that you want!

Extended chords are the 9th , 11th , and 13th chords. Like 7th chords, each can come in various ‘flavors’ such as dominant, major, and minor. Extended chords are most often in the dominant form, so that’s what I’ll cover in this article – just lower the 3rd for a minor form, and raise the 7th for a major form when you need them.

To begin with, you’ll need to know the seventh chords. There are a lot of different dominant seventh voicings available, but when I play chord changes, I think about what note I’m going to put on top of the chord – keeping the top note close together from one chord to the next gives you the smoothest changes. Since there are four notes in a seventh chord (1-3-5-b7) I normally work with just four voicings. Chord roots are indicated by squares:

The next step is learning which other chord tones fall on each string. Most beginning and intermediate guitarists only worry about where the root falls, and place the rest of the fingers from rote. Take a little bit of time to learn the rest of the chord tones in these voicings (the b7 is shown as just 7 to avoid overcrowding the diagrams):

Starting with these simple chord forms, we can now add – and subtract – notes to make extended chords. Subtracting a note from a chord might be a new idea to you, but it’s useful, and sometimes essential, in forming extended chords – the formula for a 13th chord is 1-3-5-b7-9-11-13, which is seven notes… and we have only six strings to work with. Something’s got to give!

The most common note to sacrifice in any extended chord is the root. You probably haven’t thought about playing chords without a root before, but it’s a very handy note to drop: because it’s only a whole step over the b7, and only a whole step below the 9th , including the root can make a chord sound muddy. The root is often going to be picked up by another instrument anyway, such as bass or keyboards, so chances are good it won’t be missed.

Knowing where the root is on each of the four seventh inversions, and knowing it can move up two frets to the 9th (which is the same note as the 2nd note in the scale), it’s a simple matter to have the 9th chords at your disposal:

(any 1st string note can be doubled on the 6th string for a fuller sound)

Moving on to 11th chords, the 11th (which is the same note as the fourth) and the 3rd are only a half step apart. The third is almost always dropped from 11th chords. Just like 9th chords, the root is optional, but so is the 5th – and the easiest way to form these chords is to drop a 5th by two frets, making it the 11th:

Last, we have the 13th chords. The 11th is almost always omitted from a 13th , and the root, fifth, and ninth are the usual choices for dropping a note. That leaves the 3rd , b7th , and 13th as the notes we truly need.

The 3rd and b7 are already in the basic chord we’re building from; I just raise the 5th by two frets (which may mean moving to the next string) to get the 13th . Then you can include one of the optional tones, the root, fifth, or ninth, and you have a nice 13th voicing:

Pretty painless, huh? In the next article, I’ll explain how these extended chords get altered to make your chord vocabulary even larger.

Also in this Series

• Untangling Chord Progressions
• Altered States
• Chord Substitution

Extended Chords was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise