Guitar Noise

Bruce Fleming takes some of the rudiments of music theory and shows how to apply it to the keyboard, enabling you to get started with making chords.

Music theory doesn’t have to be a scary subject. This page answers some of your most common questions about theory.

Let's explain the basic workings of the Number System (also known to some as Nashville Numbers).

This lesson takes some of the mystery out of chord substitution by giving you detailed and simple explanations.

Paul Andrews gives us a basic guide to key signatures, including how to recognize and (easily) memorize what you need to know about them.

Here's a mathematical approach to learning the fretboard. This is not a replacement for theory but it does teach a way of using theory without too much thought.

One of the more difficult tasks to learning the guitar is mastering the fretboard. Bruce presents us with one method, which employs simple memorization and your ability to quickly add small integers in your head. The first part of this article will present this method, and the second part will provide additional information to reinforce your learning of the fret board.

Tom has a gift of being able to explain complicated material in a very uncomplicated manner. After guiding us through the maze of extended chords in his last article, he returns to explain altered chords and does so in such a simple way that I wish I’d had him explain it to me many, many years ago!

Getting to the stage of playing 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 time you’ve finished reading Tom’s latest article, you’ll be able to form any chord extension that you want!

In this lesson, Tom unravels some of the mysteries of chord progressions. We’ll learn about cadences, the natural harmonic series, chord extensions, secondary dominants and much more.

First time contributor Oleg gives us a great approach to looking at your guitar in terms of musical intervals. This is a terrific method to use for lead playing as well as sight reading and increasing your ability to take the music that’s in your head and bring it out of your guitar.

Bruce returns to Guitar Noise with his second piece, one on the fascinating topic of chord voicings. This is a great thing for those of you who play with other guitarists to read up on and put to practice.

Bruce was kind enough to write out this concise article, which spells out some of the basics of chord theory. He was even kinder to include all sorts of handy charts and diagrams that should help out any beginner wanting to tackle this subject.

Just the words augmented and diminished give us pause. Do we need a special degree or extra study to employ one of these chords? Not at all! Let’s examine these chords, how they’re formed and the functions they can serve. If you’re capable of counting to twelve, you’re capable of understanding and using these marvelous chords.

In this article Jimmy Hudson discusses how to know what key you are in and how to stay in key.