The main focus of this lesson is to instruct on how to play the simplest of chords on a keyboard while showing how to obtain them with some small amount of understanding. Hopefully, this will help the guitarist understand how chords are played on the guitar easier than using the guitar alone. It will also provide the guitarist with a quick introduction to the keyboard. By using the information provided below, the guitarist can more easily figure out what notes are being played with particular chords.

Having some small amount of musical training while I was young, I can say where things usually begin when a new student is being taught piano. It starts at middle C.

Middle C – The Starting Point

So, where is middle C? The placement of middle C on a musical staff can be researched on the person’s own time. I am sure it is found in a number of other places on the Internet. This lesson will show how to finger all the major chords, minor chords, and dominant 7th chords, hopefully without overwhelming you with music theory. So, let us have a look at a diagram of the some keyboards.

Note that middle C is off centre and not the middle note in the keyboard. This is because this and many other keyboards as well as full-size pianos are not symmetrical about middle C. The reasoning behind that is for some other topic of research that goes into the development of music as a whole. What is important is that you can learn how to locate middle C with a little practice.

Other common sizes for keyboards are 73 keys, 76 keys, and 88 keys. These can be seen below in Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5, respectively.

While middle C is not usually (see Figure 3) in the middle of the keyboard, it is almost there. It makes a practical place to start in terms of range of musical sounds. It also makes a very good place to start when studying music theory.

The C Major Scale

The notes of the C major scale are:

Each note in the C major scale can be numbered using regular numerals and Roman numerals:

Note that I listed the next C in the scale while showing an octave instead of stopping at B as shown in Figure 2. This has to do with showing the formula for a major scale. This will make learning how to apply the formula to other notes easier later.

Notice that when the C major scale is numbered using Roman numerals, some are numbered with capital letters and some are numbered with lower case letters. (Jumping a little bit ahead, all chords in the C major family are built using only notes from the C major scale.)

When playing chords in the C major family, very little thinking has to be done because only the white keys are played. When each finger of the right hand assigned to one key, everything falls into place. If you place the thumb of the right hand on middle C, the rest of the fingers will each fall on one key naturally. Refer to Figure 6 below as an example.

So, start by playing the C major chord, commonly referred to as C. Place the thumb of the right hand on middle C (or any C), skip using the index finger, place the middle finger on E, skip the ring finger, and place the little finger on G. That is the simplest C chord you can make. To play the D minor (commonly shown as Dm) chord, just move the hand to the right one white key so the thumb plays D, the middle finger plays F, and the little finger plays A. To play the E minor chord (commonly shown as Em), move the hand to the right one white key. This is the same for all successive chords for the C major scale.

Now go back to the C major scale where it is numbered with Roman numerals. Those notes numbered with capital Roman numerals have chords that are major chords. Those numbered with lower case Roman numerals have chords that are minor chords. The exception to this last statement is the vii° chord. The vii° chord is a diminished chord. (It is a chord with a minor 3rd and a 5th that is lowered by a half a step. This information can be left for later exploration of knowledge of music theory.)

So:

Chord Names

When it comes to playing chords an octave higher, it is easy using a piano or other keyboard instrument. When playing guitar it is different because you can form different version of the same chord in different places on the fingerboard. If playing an electric guitar it is easier to play chords one octave higher because the fingers can be placed that high on the fretboard (fingerboard) more easily due to the way the guitar is built.

For the C major scale, the chords are shown for the respective note below:

Difference between Major Chords and Minor Chords

A full chord must be constructed of at least three notes. Any chord in the family of the C major scale (and any major scale for that matter) begins with the note which is the name of the chord, the third note up from that note and the fifth note up from the note of the name of the chord. For a C chord, that means the chord is made up of the notes C (I), E (iii), and G (V) of the C major scale.

What makes a minor chord minor? The answer is that the 2nd note in the chord (the major 3rd) is made a minor 3rd. This means that the 2nd note is reduced by a half-step. Example: D notes: D, F#, A – note that F# is not a note in the C major scale. Now it can be seen that the D chord is not a chord in the C major chord family. Dm note: D, F, A – note that the major 3rd (F#) is reduced to F.

I once saw a musical play about a couple of piano students that made humorous the stories their careers starting from their early days. The piano teacher asked the question of the students “What makes a minor chord sound minor?” The answer was that a minor chord sounds sad whereas a major chord sounds happy. When you play a minor chord in comparison this generally sounds true.

Just using the knowledge associated with the C major scale we know where the major chords are for the notes: C, F and G. We the know the minor chords are for the notes D, E, A, and the diminished chord is associated with the note B. Remember, the method for playing all of the chords in the C major scale is provided in the paragraph below Figure 6. All chords in the C major chord family can be played by using the thumb, the middle finger and the little finger. Actually, for later use and knowledge, the same holds true for playing the chords to the left of the right hand but starting with the little finger and moving to the right. The fingers used on the left hand are the little finger, the middle finger and the thumb.

Extending the Knowledge of Minor Chords to Find the Rest of the Major Chords on the Keyboard

Figure 7 shows an octave of keys from the notes C to C. The top of the figure shows how an octave normally looks while the bottom of the figure shows the octave as if the black keys in the octave were extended to the full length of the white keys. The extension of the black keys is done to show that there is movement of one half-step between all keys, black or white even though some white keys have no black keys between them. Note that there is no sharp (#) or flat (b) between the notes E and F and B and C.

Aside: However, the movement from the notes E to F and B to C or the movement of F to E and C to B is still only one half-step. This is important to understand because using this knowledge along with of what notes are in the C major scale allows us to figure out for ourselves the formula for the major scale if we so wish. More importantly, with this knowledge, if we forget the formula for the major scale, we can refer to the C major scale to figure out the formula.

Because we know what makes a minor chord minor, we can extend that knowledge to figure out what the major chords are for the notes D, E and A by using the chords Dm, Em and Am. Place the right-hand fingers on a keyboard for one of the minor chords mentioned. Just move the middle finger (the one on the 2nd note of the chord) up a half-step. To moved up a half-step is to move up by one key – black or white. Refer to Figure 7 above for reference.

Using Dm to find D: Using the notes D, F and A => move the middle finger up by one half-step gives the notes D, F# and A. Refer to Figure 8 as an example. Imagine moving the fingers from the notes indicated on the bottom chord of Figure 8, Dm to the top chord of Figure 8, D.

Using Em to find E: Using the notes E, G and B => move the middle finger up by one half-step gives the notes E, G# and B.

Using Am to find A: Using the notes A, C and E => move the middle finger up by one half-step gives the notes A, C# and E.

Using Bdim to find B: Using the notes B, D and F => move the middle finger up by one half-step and the little finger up by one half-step gives the notes B, D# and F#.

We can also use the above knowledge to figure out what the minor chords are what the minor chords are for C, F and G. To do this, simply finger the chord and move the middle finger down one half-step. Cm has the notes C, Eb and G. Fm has the notes F, Ab and C. Gm has the notes G, Bb and D.

Now it is possible to figure out all of the major and minor chords for all the notes on the keyboard. It is good to note that this method is easiest to use for the white keys. The only chord that has not be explicitly discussed is Bdim. Bdim has a minor 3rd and a minor 5th. You should be able to figure out or research what the notes are for the chords B and a Bm. You could also use the major scale formula to obtain the B major scale and work from there.

NOTE: It is important to reference the keyboard (a real one or the diagrams) when studying this material to have a visual aid.

The Major Scale Formula

The major scale (as well as every other scale) has a set formula. However, if you know the C major scale and the key spacing, you can figure out the formula every time. Again, it is important to know that there are no black keys between the keys B and C, and E and F.

Half-Steps and Whole-Steps:

A half-step is a movement (up or down) form one key to the one immediately next to it. (Refer to Figure 7). Examples: C to C#, G# to A, E to F, B to C, A# to A, C to B or G to
F#.

A whole-step is a movement of 2 half-steps. Examples: C to D, E to F#, A# to C or F to D#.

C Major Scale Formula:

• W = Whole-step
• H = Half-step

By using the major scale formula you can figure out all the major scales. This information can be used in many ways. Such as figuring out all of the major chords on the keyboard. However, because a major chord is made up of the 1st note of the chord, the major 3rd from the 1st note of the chord, and the major 5th from the 1st note of the chord the major scale formula will provide you with the major chords in the root note chord family for the root (I) note, the fourth (IV) and the fifth (V) notes of the major scales. Again, remember that you have already been provided with the method of figuring out all the major and minor chords for all the keys on the keyboard. Stick with the white keys for now.

Notes Aside

By figuring out all of the major scales and putting them in ascending order you end up with half of the Cycle of Fifths. This is information used for chord progressions in many songs. The numbering of the notes in the chord family (originally presented in the scale) is also often used in chord progressions of songs.

When figuring out a major scale, it is a good indication that it is correct if the 7th note is a half-step below the 8th note.

If the chords in the music you are playing are contained within the major scale, you can use that scale to solo.

Dominant Seventh Chords

Dominant 7th chords are often associated with a bluesy sound. To figure out how to play a dominant 7th chord, reduce the (major) 7th by a half-step and fit it into the chord fingering. Dominant 7th chords are written as follows: A7, B7, C7, etc.

The 7th of the C major scale is B. The dominant 7th is A#/Bb. A# and Bb are the same note. They are called equivalent harmonics. The notes of the C7 chord are C, E, G, and A# or C, E, G, and Bb.

Applying This Knowledge to the Guitar

One of the main advantages to learning about music theory using a keyboard is that the keyboard is a much more linear instrument than the guitar. One key follows directly after another. On the guitar, when you get to the last fret on one string, the next note on the next string is not the next note as it is on the keyboard. The same note of the same pitch appears at more than one place on the guitar.

To take this theory and apply it to guitar remember that standard tuning on a 6 string guitar is (low to high): E A D G B e. You can remember this by using the letters of standard tuning as an acronym for

Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye
Eddie.

Another piece of information that is important to know about the guitar is that a movement of 1 fret (up or down) is a movement of a half-step. A movement of 2 frets is a whole-step. Now you can pick out scales and chords on the guitar as well as the keyboard.

The rest is for you to explore.

• Why should I learn music theory?
• How do I memorize all this theory stuff?
• What is the best way to memorize the notes in each key?
• How do I read time signatures?
• How do I find out what key a song is in?
• How do I transpose songs into different keys?
• Why do we use more than 3 strings to make a chord?
• What is an interval?
• What is a relative minor?
• What are passing tones?
• What is dissonance?
• What does the 7 in C7 mean?
• What is the difference between a 7th and a major 7th?
• What is the difference between A9 and Asus2?
• What is the difference between C Ionian and D Dorian?
• What are 13th chords?
• What are diminished chords?
• How are diminished power chords formed?
• What does IV of IV mean?
• When do I use E sharp instead of F?
• Is a chord change in a I-IV-V progression also a key change?
• What key is House of the Rising Sun in?

Why should I learn music theory?

Theory can increase your ability as a player dramatically, and since it’s always a good idea to learn more, theory is another bit of knowledge to acquire. Theory can help you work with other musicians such as keyboardists, horn players, other stringed instrument players. Theory can dramatically help you form a song, understand what other people are talking about, and learn about the basic structure of music in its “theoretical” form.

From scales, to keys, to chord construction – they all involve theory, and knowing it will help you resolve any confusion you might encounter. It also helps in communicating your music to others – mainly musicians, but yes, others.

So the bottom line is, why not? Theory might seem hard, but didn’t another hobby that you took up and now enjoy seem hard at first?

To get started or brush up on theory read the article Theory Without Tears and then check out our music theory for guitar page.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to theory and select edit to make improvements.

How do I memorize all this theory stuff?

One of the biggest problems that faces any beginner is worrying about the tremendous amount of things to practice and memorize. I’ve been playing for over 25 years and I am still finding out new things to practice and memorize! No lie.

Like it or not, you cannot learn everything at once. No one can. But as long as you are enjoying playing you will keep practicing and you will one day wonder if there ever was a time when you didn’t know the things you know now.

What you need to do is to develop a practice plan, a way to focus on a few things at once. If you haven’t done so, you might want to read my piece on practicing called A Question of Balance. It might give you some help in this area.

You should definitely learn where all the notes on the fretboard are. I tell my students not to memorize the whole fretboard right off. Start with the “main frets” – the notes on the fifth and seventh frets, for instance. See, if you know what the notes are at certain point on the fretboard, you’ve taken away a lot of the “tremendousness” of the task. How much of a stretch would it be to then learn the third and ninth frets? You’ve got a third of it already down!

And you might want to start out with a simple pentatonic scale (I recommend learn the Em pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) first since it’s one of the easiest to memorize) but you should do this in such a way that it’s fun. Work a practice based around some songs you like or make a tape recording of yourself playing the blues in E and then try to come up with some leads.

The more you enjoy yourself the more you will want to learn.

What is the best way to memorize the notes in each key?

I don’t know if this will be easy or not, but there is a distinct pattern to learning these. And it’s really not that hard. The main thing to remember is that they always go in sequence. If a key has two flats, for instance, one of those flatted notes is the same as the flatted note in the key with one flat. If that sounds confusing, hopefully it won’t be as we move along.

First off, we agree that C has no flats and no sharps. What I like to do is to progress in either direction from there. Usually, when I hit Gb or F# I call it quits because they are the same key.

Okay, flats first. The easiest thing (for me) to remember is that the keys progress in 4ths (F, for instance, is the fourth of C) and that the flatted note is also the fourth in the new scale. In the example of the key of F, Bb is the fourth. Not only is it the fourth, though, it is also the next key in the sequence! This makes things very easy:

C – 0 flats
F – 1 flat (Bb)
Bb – 2 flats (Bb, Eb)
Eb – 3 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab)
Ab – 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db)
Db – 5 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb)
Gb – 6 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb)

Now sharps are a little harder, but there are a couple of ways to look at it. First off, going from C to G (which is the key with one sharp) is moving in the intervals of fifths. The next key after G would be the fifth of G which is D. For me, the key is remembering that the newest sharp will always be a half step lower than the root. G has one sharp and it is F#, which is that half step lower. D is next so it will have F# (because it has to carry over to the next key) and the new sharp will be C#. Here we go:

C – 0 sharps
G – 1 sharp (F#)
D – 2 sharps (F#, C#)
A – 3 sharps (F#, C#, G#)
E – 4 sharps (F#, C#, G#, D#)
B – 5 sharps (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#)
F# – 6 sharps (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#)

If you remember that flats progress in fourths and sharps progress in fifths and simply remember the first flat or sharp, then it’s as simple as this:

Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb
F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#

I hope that this helps. It may not seem like it but after a while it becomes second nature to not only know these, but also the relative minors!

How do I read time signatures?

The time signature (along with the key signature) is one of the first things you encounter when you read music, so you might as well learn just what it means at some point, no? The time signature usually consists of two numbers written one on top of the other, almost like a fraction except there is no line (other than the lines of the staff and that doesn’t count). These provide you with two important pieces of information about the song that you are going to play. The top number tells you how many beats are in a measure (and we learned about measures in Before You Accuse Me). The lower number (the “denominator” if you will, the number that sits on the bottom) indicates which note is going to count as “one beat.” The vast majority of music you are likely to encounter will be in 4/4 timing:

Sometimes you will see “4/4″ timing written out as “C.” “C” and “4/4″ are interchangeable. And if you’re really interested in a theory of the origins of this symbol, check out the “Email of the Week” in this old newsletter: Newsletter Vol 2 # 4.

As well as “C” there is also a “C” with a vertical line slashing it – (C)

It looks like the symbol for a penny. This is known, appropriately enough, as “cut time,” or

There are also songs, many marches in fact, which are in 2/4 time. And you have undoubtedly heard songs that use 3/4 timing as well. Waltzes are in 3/4:

Probably eighty-five to ninety percent of all songs are written in either of these two time signatures. 6/8 timing is very similar to 3/4 in that it has the same kind of “triplet” feel. It’s easier to count in groups of threes rather than sets of six, isn’t it?

For a complete lesson on time signatures check out the article Timing is Everything. There is also a detailed explanation with examples in the article House of the Rising Sun.

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How do I find out what key a song is in?

At the beginning of each piece of music, the staff will be followed by two important pieces of information – the key signature and the time signature.

You may not know this, but sheet music is often much more helpful than TABS in ways that benefit the player who is not concerned with playing things note per note. The key signature is the number of sharps or flats (or the lack thereof) that appear immediately after the clef. This will, much more often than not, tell you what key a song is in. Notice I said sharps or flats, not both. We’ll come back to this in a moment.

If you’ve read any of the beginner’s theory pieces (Theory Without Tears or The Musical Genome Project) you are well aware that there are more than seven notes. There are actually twelve. Some are designated by just a letter, while others are a letter and a symbol like this – # – or this – b. The “#” means “sharp” or “one half step above the note of the letter. C#, for example, is a half step above C. A “b” is a flat sign, meaning that we have moved a half step down from the note of the letter. Eb is a half step below E. And let’s note here that this does indeed mean that some notes actually share the same name. “Ab” and “G#” are, for our purposes, the same note. Here’s a handy chart:

In musical notation, the symbols for flats and sharps are called accidentals. There is also an accidental for “natural” meaning that the note should be the straight letter value, neither flat nor sharp.

Why on earth would you even need a “natural” symbol? Well, that should become clear momentarily. Suppose you were writing out a song in the key of E, a fairly common key for guitar music. There are four sharps in the E major scale. See for yourself:

E F# G# A B C# D# E

Would you want to have to put a sharp notation every time you wrote one of these four notes? Of course not. What you would do is write out your sharps ahead of time, at the very beginning of the piece. This is like a big billboard saying, “Hey! Whenever you see an F, it’s supposed to be an F#, okay?” This is what the key signature does. So, how do you know what key a song is in? Well, you may not believe this, but there are rules! These rules are dictated by the formation of the major scale. Here’s a run down:

• Key of C – no flats, no sharps
• Key of G – 1 sharp: F#
• Key of D – 2 sharps: F#, C#
• Key of A – 3 sharps: F#, C#, G#
• Key of E – 4 sharps: F#, C#, G#, D#
• Key of B – 5 sharps – F#, C#, G#, D#, A#
• Key of F – 1 flat: Bb
• Key of Bb – 2 flats: Bb, Eb
• Key of Eb – 3 flats: Bb, Eb, Ab
• Key of Ab – 4 flats: Bb, Eb, Ab, Db
• Key of Db – 5 flats: Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb

To learn more about key signatures read Your very Own Rosetta Stone and Key Changes.

How do I transpose songs into different keys?

If you ever decide to play music with musicians other than guitarists (and bass players don’t count!) you will very quickly run into a situation where one of you knows a particular song in one key while the other knows it in another. The guitar has a natural disinclination towards keys that contain flats. Unless you’re incredibly adept at barre chords knowing how to transpose a song will prove to be an invaluable skill. And not only is it easy to learn, it’s actually a lot of fun when you get the hang of it.

You will need a capo for transposing so you might want to read The Under Appreciated Art of Using a Capo first.

This is how it works. If I put my capo on the first fret, every chord I play has now moved up a half step. An A chord is now a Bb (or A#). An E minor is now F minor. If I put it on the fourth fret, everything is now up two whole steps (four half steps). A C is now an E. An A minor is a C# minor. The following chart will give you some of the basic chord transpositions:

As well as reading The Under Appreciated Art of Using a Capo you should also check out Turning Notes Into Stone for a more complete lesson on transposing keys.

Why do we use more than 3 strings to make a chord?

The reason why we just don’t play three strings only is because that would very hard to do, especially if you were strumming fast.

Chords are made up of multiples of the three notes. All the three note thing tells you is that you’ll see those three notes only, in that chord. The reason why you learn those other chords with sevenths and nineths is because they help with tonal variety and connect melodic phrases sometimes better than triads can.

As far as knowing which ones to use, the notes in that chord you want to use should be in the key you are in. If they are not, then there should be a reason for using that chord. For instance, in the key of C major, there is no A7 chord right? But if you use it and resolve directly to a d minor chord, a chord in the key of C Major, it’ll sound great.

What is an interval?

Here’s our C major scale:

do re mi fa sol la te do
C D E F G A B C

An interval is the distance from one note to the next. We name the intervals according to their place on the major scale. From C to E, for instance, is called a third (okay, a major third). From C to A is a sixth. D to B is also a sixth. Do you see this? The starting note becomes your root and B is the sixth note in a D major scale. Using this same logic, D to F is not a third, but a MINOR third. How about E to A? Right, it’s a fourth. And E to C? Right again, E to C is a minor sixth. An eighth, from C to C, D to D, F# to F#, and so on, is called an OCTAVE. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that one.

For detailed lessons on intervals check out the lessons Happy New Ear and A Study On Intervals.

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What is a relative minor?

Try playing a G chord followed by the E minor. Can you hear how similar they are? If we look at the notes that make up the chord, we see the following:

Notice that these chords share two of their three notes. This is because E minor is the RELATIVE MINOR of G major. The relative minor shares the same notes in the major scale, but it’s root is the sixth of the major. Here’s our G major scale:

In order to find the relative minor we look for the sixth and make that the root. Therefore, E minor is the relative minor of G major and the E minor scale would look like this:

Here’s a chart of a few major/relative minor keys you can use (but please feel free to make out one of your own, listing all twelve possibilities as a test!):

This answer is a small extract from the article Happy New Ear. be sure to check out the complete article for more exercises and examples.

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What are passing tones?

This is a note in the melody (or the chord) that is taking part in the transition from one chord to another. Passing tones help to create “tension” between the melody and the accompaniment that is released when the melody and the chord are “resolved.”

Good music, much like art, theater, literature, or relationships and life, for that matter, tends to be a series of tensions and resolutions (or releases) of varying intensities.

A lot more has been written about this in the article Multiple Personality Disorder.

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What is dissonance?

A question on harmony, or perhaps the antithesis of harmony: What do people mean by “dissonance” and other such terms when talking about chord changes?

Dissonance, according to the dictionary, is “an inharmonious combination of sounds; discord; any lack of harmony or agreement.”

When we listen to music, certain notes sound pleasing when played together. For many people, the interval of a major third (C and E, for instance, or G and B, etc.) is perhaps the most pleasant, or harmonious sound.

Dissonance is when we create a sound that is not harmonious. There are degrees to how harsh the dissonance can be. If you were to play a C (5th fret, G string) and a C# (2nd fret, B string) together, it would sound as if the notes are clashing.

In a sense, they are – you feel that this combination of notes wants to turn into something else. It’s almost as if you’ve caught them in mid-metamorphosis. Play these notes again and now slide your finger on the C down to B (4th fret, G string) and at the same time slide the C# up to D (3rd fret, B string). Can you hear how the dissonance completely disappears? It’s the interplay between dissonance and harmony that helps to add a dramatic, almost dynamic aspect to a song.

Dissonance can be created in countless ways. You can add a dissonant note to a chord (even via a melody or bass line), you can play one chord on top of another, or you can play a string of chords while holding one note steady in the bass.

But the thing to remember is that not everyone hears the same sorts of dissonance. It’s a matter of what you’re used to. That C/C# thing we mentioned earlier? A jazz player would write it off as a C#maj7 and might not think of it as dissonant at all.

What does the 7 in C7 mean?

Whenever you see a number after a chord, it refers to the note in that particular scale that you should add to the basic chord. If you know that the C scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C), then C6, for example, is the basic C chord (C, E, G) plus the 6th, which is A.

But sevenths are a different matter. If you see a “Cmaj7,” then this would be C, E, G and B, which is the major seventh. A regular “7″ chord means that you want to add a FLATTED seventh note – a major seven which is lowered a half step so that it is one full step below the root. So a “C7″ would be C, E, G and Bb.

We go over the formation of these and other chords quite thoroughly in The Power of Three and Building Additions and Suspensions. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to give those a once-over.

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What is the difference between a 7th and a major 7th?

Unlike a major or minor chord where the third is a major or minor third, the seventh chord is a minor seventh unless we specify that it is a major. If I say play an A, you automatically play an A major. If I say play an A7, we automatically add the G note (minor seventh) to the chord. Only if I ask for an Amaj7 will you play the natural seventh (G#).

In music theory, a seventh is traditionally used to make a transition from the root (or I) to the subdominant (IV). This transition is called a resolution. Even the use of this term “resolution” implies that a seventh chord is incomplete, that there must be a following chord that will bring it (and our ears) to a final point.

For further study on sevenths check out the articles Happy New Ear, Sevens Threes and Nines and Building Additions (and Suspensions).

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What is the difference between A9 and Asus2?

One of the problems in music is that people often ignore (or simply don’t know) the “standard” notation. I have been guilty of this myself simply because it can be very tedious to write out “Aadd9″ all the time! There’s also another problem that is less apparent and we’ll come to that in a moment. First, let’s define the notes of the chords involved, shall we?

Okay, technically, there are very big differences between A9, Aadd9 and Asus2. If you’ve read Building Additions (and Suspensions) you might already have a handle on this. Let’s start with an A major chord:

A: A, C#, E

Any “suspended” chord means that you are replacing the third of the chord (in this case the C#) with something else, normally the 2 or 4. So an Asus2 is this:

Asus2: A, B, E

An Aadd9 is adding the ninth (in this case the B) in addition to the rest of the A major chord. To me, there is no difference between a “2″ chord and an “add9.” So the Aadd9 is as follows:

Aadd9: A, C#, E, B

And finally, any “9″ chord should, technically speaking, include the 7th. Usually it is the flatted (or dominant) 7th but it could easily be the major 7th as well:

A9(usually): A, C#, E, G, B

A9(w/major 7th): A, C#, E, G#, B

Okay, I hope that clears up what these chords actually are. Now let’s look at why there is often confusion as to what to call the chord. Suppose you see a chord written out as follows:

E – open
B – open
G – 2nd fret
D – 2nd fret
A – open
E – don’t play

Here the notes are A, E and B. Technically, this would be an Asus2, since there is no C# to be found. But the guitar is not like the piano where you always have all the necessary notes (relatively) close at hand. Often, especially with chords that have more than four notes, you end up leaving one or more off. If you were playing this chord with a pianist, you would sound okay whether the pianist were playing an A9, an Aadd9 or even an A11 or A13. If you wanted to play a true A9, then you’d need the G and C# notes so this would be one possible fingering:

E – open (E)
B – 2nd fret (C#)
G – 4th fret (B)
D – 5th fret (G)
A – open (A)
E – don’t play

And you can see where that might be a pain. This is why it’s important to not only know what notes a chord is made up of but also what voicings will give you exactly what you are looking for. For instance, when I see A2 or Aadd9, I tend to play it like this:

E – open
B – open
G – 6th fret (C#)
D – 7th fret (A)
A – open
E – don’t play

The bottom line is that whoever is writing out the chords often calls it whatever he or she thinks it is. For better or worse. The best thing is to also have in your power to know what else it could be. Sometimes it is up to you to make the call but, as always, knowing what choices you have at your disposal helps matters immensely.

What is the difference between C Ionian and D Dorian?

If C Ionian is C D E F G A B C and D Dorian is D E F G A B C D, then what is the difference between the two?

The difference is not so obvious. To fully appreciate the difference, you need to play a chord that has a C in it over the C Ionian, and play a chord that has D in it over D Dorian. This will light up the mode. You can’t really hear the difference by just playing the scale by itself.

By the way, you don’t have to play them in order, or diatonically. But you really need to emphasize the mode you want by ending on that note. So for Dorian, you really want to end that melodic phrase with a D note.

What are 13th chords?

When building a chord like “C13th,” there are seven notes shown. The most notes that can be covered by one hand on the fretboard at one time is six. So, which note (s) do you leave out in order to actually play the chord?

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of debate amongst music theorists as to what is the “proper” thing to do in such a situation when you have a chord that has more notes than you are able to produce.

Traditionally, the fifth or the third would be left out (usually in that order). Believe it or not, there are instances, though, when the root is the “missing” note.

But the real determining factor is what notes you are able to finger (or not finger) on your fretboard. For instance, if you strum your guitar (standard tuning) without putting any fingers on the fretboard at all you would have an A11. The notes, from low to high, would be E (fifth), A (root), D (eleventh), G (seventh), B (ninth) and E (fifth again). Here the third (C#) is the missing note. You could always add this by playing it on the 1st (or 6th) string but it sounds perfectly fine as it is.

Generally a good rule of thumb with 9th, 11th, and 13th chords is to really try to include the seventh along with the root in order to give it some sense of identity.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to 13th chords and select edit to make improvements.

What are diminished chords?

Diminished chords are very cool, and easy to understand. Diminished chords serve a cadential function just like a dominant 7. Just like all bar chords these are universal shapes and can be moved anywhere on the fretboard and you will come out with a diminished chord as long as the shape is retained.

For the complete answer read What are diminished chords?

How are diminished power chords formed?

Technically speaking there really is no such thing as the diminished power chord. A power chord by definition is, as you pointed out, simply the root and the fifth of a scale. The term “power chord” is strictly a contrivance of the electric guitarist. You can, however, play two notes, one being the first, or root, and the other being a diminished fifth. This is called playing an interval. It is also a very interesting interval, theory wise, because the diminished fifth is as far away as you can get from the root.

For the complete answer read How are diminished power chords formed?

What does IV of IV mean?

There are times (quite often in fact) when you will be playing a song in one key, just for example, let’s say the key of C, and you will come upon a chord which doesn’t really exist in that particular key, but hey, there it is. It sounds perfectly fine though (in the context of whatever particular chord progression that you’re playing) so maybe you won’t think about exactly how this chord “fits” in.

Let’s look at a few chord progressions in C to demonstrate this, okay? Try them out yourself if you want to.

1. C Bb F C
2. C E7 Am Dm D7 G C
3. C A D G C

Now, as we were saying, since the key of C has no flats or sharps, any chord that contains any flat or sharp is not actually part of the key of C. Where did it come from?

What music theory tries to do is to look at these chords in terms of how they fit into the flow of the chord progression. All chord progressions are simply movements from one point to the next, hopefully they will eventually bring us back to the home (or root) chord.

Sometimes in moving from one point to the next, we are actually “borrowing” chords from other keys (here the Bb in #1, the E7 and D7 in #2 and the A and D in #3). Theory tries to label these chords in terms of the keys from which they are borrowed. We (usually) try to determine where they came from by where they are going to (how they are resolved).

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, let’s look at the primary and secondary chords in the key of C major, shall we?

Are you with me? Okay, in example one (C, Bb, F, C) we need to ask about that Bb. C, F, C we already can make out as I, IV, I. Since the Bb is aiding in the transition from C to F, let’s theorize (I know bad pun) that Bb must have some relation to F. And sure enough if we look at the chords in an F major scale we will see:

In the F scale, Bb is IV. But what we want to do as music theorists is to give the Bb some kind of context in the key of C. So we have to relate it somehow to a chord in the key of C and that’s exactly what we do – we call it IV “of” IV, meaning that it is the IV of F (which is the IV of C).

Almost always (and yes there are ALWAYS exceptions) an “of” chord will be a IV or V of something. In example #2 (C, E7, Am, Dm, D7, G, C) we borrow two chords (the E7 and D7) from other places. Again if you listen to where the chords take you, it’s fairly easy to establish that the E7 is resolving to Am and the D7 to G. So we would write out this progression like this:

Are you still with me on this? Because sometimes, just to show you how tricky things can get, a chord might not be resolving to one of the chords of a given key. Then you have to be a bit of a detective to figure things out. Example #3 (C, A, D, G, C) is a typical example of this sort of thing. Here not only are A and D obviously “borrowed” from other keys, but the A resolves to the D which, since D is not part of the C chord group, presents us with a bit of a problem.

What we do in this case is to work backwards. Let’s mark what we know, okay?

Since G is the resolution for the D chord, we can (and rightly so!) make the case for D to be V of V. But that still leaves us with the A chord. But since A is the V of D, we basically create a secondary layer to describe how the A relates to the G. A would be V of V in G, correct? So we basically write that out in terms of the G to the C -

Aren’t you sorry you asked!!!

Seriously, This is an absolutely fascinating concept that many writers use (even though they may not know it). If you’d like to get a bit better handle on it, I suggest you read my column You Say You Want A Resolution.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to IV of IV and select edit to make improvements.

When do I use E sharp instead of F?

I was talking to a friend who is a music teacher and to test me he asked me what the seventh would be in a F#maj7 chord. I eventually said the answer was F, he said the answer was actually E#. I was a bit confused by this, I am familiar with the enharmonic principle, but I had never heard anyone mention E#. So I went and dug out my books and looked up a couple of illustrations of the circle of fifths, and sure enough under F# in all the illustrations were the notes F#,G#,A#,B,C#,D#…and E#.

It’s questions like this that give music theorists a bad name…

Okay, technically you are both right. But in terms of the “classical” way of looking at things, E# is considered the correct answer. Why? Because if you look at the key signature for F#, there are six sharps (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, and E#). And it’s the same thing when you look at the key of Gb – there will be a “Cb” in there. So the rule of thumb is to think of how the key signature would be written in standard notation and then to use that as your guideline.

This sort of thing though is what tends to scare good people away from music. It’s no skin off anyone’s nose to say, “Yes you are correct, however, this is how most scholars would like you to answer this…”

And in case you are interested – it is possible to argue the case that E# and F are NOT necessarily the same note. Think about this – on a violin or similar stringed instrument that has no frets (including the fretless bass guitar), it is wholly possible to make your notes sharper or flatter than they would be on a guitar, piano or any other instrument. It is simply a matter of moving your finger an infinitesimal distance one way or the other from the core note. This is why you have to have a great ear to play one of those things…

Is a chord change in a I-IV-V progression also a key change?

Technically the key of a song does NOT change with each chord change – things could get very weird if that were the case. For example, in the key of A you could solo for four bars on the A minor pentatonic scale then use the D minor pentatonic scale for two bars and back to A. You shouldn’t think of the switch to D as a “key change” per se but you can take advantage of the brief shift in modality to use a D minor pentatonic scale for the lead over these two measures. You can also use the same logic if you so desire to play an E minor pentatonic in the one measure of E (V) that comes up later on.

Two interesting things: the A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G) could be used throughout the entire blues progrssion (I, IV, V). But if you wanted to try something interesting, you could also use the D minor pentatonic (D, F, G, A, C) either throughout the entire song or at least through the two measures of A after the two measures of D, just to spice things up a bit and create a very interesting feel.

What key is House of the Rising Sun in?

House of the Rising Sun is an incredibly interesting song because it flits between all three of the minor scales (natural, harmonic and melodic), never staying in one scale for long. However, it is always in A minor.

You could go a couple of different ways with this. First off, A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) will work over most of the progression. The only thing that could really hurt would be wailing on the G note over the E chord. True, G is a blue note in the E blues scale and the E minor pentatonic so if you use it wisely you may be fine.

What would also work would be to remember that leads are built upon more than just scales. Using chord shapes along “chord substitutions” will give you some very cool lines. For instance, Am is made up of A, C and E. If you kept those notes cycling in a triplet like this:

E – 12 – - – - – - – - – -
B – - – - 13 – - – - – - -
G – - – - – - – 14 – - – -

through the first part of the chord progression, you’d have this:

and that would sound very dynamic.

For more on this song check out the song lesson House of The Rising Sun and find out some intersting history in Legendary House.

Next, we are going to “code” these chords by changing them to a “number.” Using the key of C major, once again, as our example, we would convert our chords like this:

C=1, Dm=2, Em=3, F=4, G=5, Am=6, and Bdim=7

Music theory uses these numbers to describe the “position” of a chord, in the context of its particular key. So, in the key of C, a “1-4-5-6″ chord progression would be the C, F, G, and A minor chords. Easy so far? Oh yea!

One of the reasons why this method is used is because you might find yourself in a situation where you might have to “transpose” a song. Transposing a song means, playing it in any key that is different from the one in which it is written, or the one in which you originally learned it. Therefore, transposing is much easier when you know the number system.

The secret to understanding this method, is realizing that the sequence of “chord types” are the same when transposing, whatever key they are played in. This means, in the key of D, a “1-4-5-6″ chord progression would be the D major, G major, A major, and B minor chords. Just like we did in the key of C, we used this numbering method to “code” the chords.

By learning the notes in all twelve diatonic major scales, as well as the chord sequence, transposing or reading a chord chart becomes easy. Of course, anything new requires practice, and patience! Remember, the relationships between the individual chords described by the sequence of numbers remain the same, and only the actual pitches will change. Just like we did with the key of C and D examples. By the way, diatonic means notes that are “true” to that particular scale.

If you know how to form barre chords, play a G major barre chord with the root note on the sixth string/third fret. Next, play a B minor barre chord with the root note on the fifth string/second fret. This will be the “1″ and “3″ chords in the key of G. Now, move these two “shapes” up the fretboard one whole step. Once you’ve moved these two chord shapes up one whole step, you will now be playing the “1″ and “3″ chords in the key of A. These two chords in the key of A will now be the A major barre chord and the C# minor barre chord. If you were going to “transpose” a song in the key of G, with a “1-3″ chord progression, to the key of A, again with a “1-3″ chord progression, this is one way to go about it. Remember that music and math are closely related. Maintain your chord shapes, and compensate for open string chords. Having fun?

Now, what if you were in a Nashville studio, and were given a chord chart labeled “Country Ballad Demo”: (key of E) Intro: 1-6-4-5-1 (2x), would you know what to do? Easy, just remember your chord sequence for the (major scale); first identify what the 1-6-4-5 notes are, then identify and associate the correct chords that are placed with those numbers.

Here is your chord sequence for the key of E: 1=E major, 2=F# minor, 3=G# minor, 4=A major, 5=B major, 6=C# minor, 7=D# diminished. Now you can find what your demo “intro” will be; (E, C#minor, A, B, and E: “1-6-4-5-1″.) The (2x) means that you you play the intro chord progression (you guessed it) twice. The tempo and all other elements of the song would be outlined at the start of the session. This is a general idea of what you could expect in a recording studio. Also, when performing onstage, it is common to use chord charts with The Number System in some bands.

As we have seen, learning The Number System involves counting the number of steps up the major scale. The numbers are there to identify where the chords are positioned in the scale, and the chord types. Two main reasons that you would want to transpose a chord progression are: to find a good key for the vocalist, and to find the best fingering for a riff or chord shape. When you transpose a chord progression to the most appropriate new key, you’ve just solved your problems. Learning and mastering barre chords is essential for making everything easier on yourself. It is so much simpler to move a barre chord because your fingering stays the same. If you don’t have one already, get a book on barre chord shapes and general music theory. This will be very helpful in the speed of learning.

Here is an example of some of the things you would study in music theory. “As far as learning about chords, there are four different triads to study. (A triad is a combination of three notes played together.) Here are the four triads: major, minor, augmented, and diminished. With any given triad, when you change the order of the notes, it is called inversion. Any one of those three notes could hold the root position. With every triad there are three inversions; root position, first inversion, and the second inversion. With each inversion you will have different sounds, and what I call the “mood” of the chord.” Confused yet? It gets easier with a good detailed book. The best thing to do is take one area of study at a time. Remember that learning The Number System and knowing your chords go hand in hand. So a good place to start in music theory is chord study.

I like to give a basic outline of a lesson, and let you discover the rest. I think it’s more fun and rewarding when you discover something on your own. It can take a little longer, but it will make you a better musician. You will have to spend more time on the subject, and put in more practice and thought, but as mentioned the rewards will be greater!

Have fun with everything you learn, and always try to apply what you’ve just learned to your older lessons.

About the Author

Jimmy is a working musician in a country/classic rock cover band. He has been playing guitar since 1979, and started in his first band in 1981. Having taught guitar for over eight years in several music stores, he still considers himself a student and loves the idea of learning. He was awarded a scholarship to the Atlanta Institute of Music, and has appeared in two different guitar magazines: Guitar FTPM, and recently in Guitar Player. His idea of success is making a living doing what you love, and being a good provider.For more on Jimmy, please visit his website.

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
  

Key signatures?

The key signature is shown on the stave just after the clef but before the time signature. The key signature is shown as sharps or flats on certain lines or spaces telling the performer to play that note one semitones higher for a sharp or a semitone lower for a flat:

In the above example, there is a whole note on the line representing an F so the performer would play the first fret on the high E (first) string but the key signature tells the performer to play every F as F# so the second fret on that string would be played instead.

As the name suggests the key signature is an indication of the key the piece is written in, with the sharps or flats shown in the key signature being present in a certain key. The number of sharps or flats present in the key signature relates directly to a major scale.

Building Major Scales with Sharps

Major scales are built using a formula of tones and semitones – a “tone” being two frets distance from a note and a “semitone” being one. Below is the formula for constructing a major scale:

When using this formula to work out a C major scale we get all natural notes, meaning there are no flats or sharps:

If we then take the fifth note from the C major scale, which is G, and using the formula construct a G major scale we get our first sharp:

If we continue to build major scales this way a pattern emerges in the way sharps build through the different keys:

The fifth note in a major scale is the new key and the seventh note is the new sharp. The number of sharps in the key signature is directly linked with the number of sharps in a major key, the example below would be in the key of A major, the key signature shows the three sharps in A major F#, C# and G#:

Building Major Scales with Flats

The theory is much the same as with sharps except the next scale comes from the fourth degree rather than the fifth. If we go back to our C major scale but take the Fourth note which in this case is an F then using the formula Construct a F major scale we end up with:

Bb is used rather than A# because this maintains that each letter name is present only once in the scale. If we continue to build in the same way we did with the sharp keys, a pattern emerges with the flats:

As shown above, the fourth note is not only the new key but also the new flat. As demonstrated with the sharps the number of flats in a key signature directly relates with the number of flats in a key, the key signature below has three flats Bb, Eb and Ab so is in the key of Eb major:

So far we have covered how to work out 15 different key signatures 7 sharps and 7 flats not forgetting C major, which has neither.

Through using mnemonics, the process of working out what key is represented by a key signature and what notes are sharpened or flattened becomes easy. Just follow the steps below:

How Many Sharps?

• Count down this mnemonic till you get to the key you want:

Go Down And Eat Bread Father Christmas

• E.g. E is the forth word so E major has four sharps.

What Sharps?

• Bring Farther and Christmas to the front of the mnemonic:

Father Christmas Go Down And Eat Bread

• Count up by the number of sharps
• e.g. for E major count four
• This gives you Farther Christmas Go Down

E Major = 4 sharps F#, C#, G# and D#

How Many Flats?

• Count down this mnemonic till you get to the key you want:

Fred Blogs Eats All Dogs Get Cracking

• E.g. E is the third word so E flat has three flats.

What Flats?

Bring Fred to the back of the mnemonic:

Blogs Eats All Dogs Get Cracking Fred

• Count up by the number of flats
• e.g. for E flat count three
• This gives you Blogs Eats All

E Flat = 3 Flats Bb, Eb and Ab

Relative Minor

Every major scale has a relative minor scale that shares its key signature. A relative minor scale is built from the sixth degree of its relative major scale, for example below is C major and its relative minor:

Relative minors are easy to work out on the fret board, simply put your fourth finger on the Major scale root note for example A fifth fret then place your third finger fourth fret, second finger third then your first finger in the second fret. The note your first finger is on is the relative minor (F#):

This now makes the subject more complex if we are faced with this key signature:

How do we know if it is D major or Bm?

This can be achieved through listening to the piece and seeing if it has a major or minor key center. Try listening to the two examples below one of the chord progressions is in the key of E minor and the other G major both would have a key signature of one sharp.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Example 1 clearly has a major key center with example two having a minor key center. If the music is in the form of a score or chord chart simply look at the first and last chord if they are minor the piece is in a minor key if they are major it’s a major key.

Here are two PDF’s one for the mnemonics, the second containing a list of key signatures and relative minors, once you think you have got it try this Java game to test your knowledge.

• Mnemonics for Major Scales (Right-click and “Save as”)
• Key Signatures (Right-click and “Save as”)

This article started life as a stand-alone piece. However, Oleg Twerdov presented a similar piece, before mine was finished, so I offer this as another look at the same idea.

First of all, I’d just like to say that it is not a replacement for theory. It will not teach you the names of notes in scales or chords. It just offers you a way of using theory without too much thought.

Let’s start by looking at a major scale in intervals, just as Oleg did- WWHWWWH or TTSTTTS. We can translate this, directly, into frets, each one being a semi- or half-tone apart from it’s nearest neighbour. Looking at the major scale this way, gives us 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret, 2 frets, 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret.

Looking at it cumulatively, we have 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12. So, the intervals are:

These numbers are important, so I’ll repeat them 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12.

Although what I show here is based on standard tuning, it is easily adaptable to other tunings, as it only requires that you know the number of frets between each string. In standard tuning, the guitar is tuned to perfect fourths (with apologies to the G string, which insists upon being a major third).

What, though, is the relevance of the numbers? They represent the number of frets from the root to the corresponding scale degree – and, knowing that, I can work out any scale position, without even having to know the name of the note I started from.

By applying the offset (in terms of the number of frets) to the starting position (the root), you can build a major scale anywhere on the fretboard with no trouble, at all.

Right, let’s do just that. Let’s arrange a major scale on the fretboard, without even knowing the name of a single note. To make things easy, we’ll start with a note on the low E (6th) string – I’ll use the 5th fret (I’ve called it 6/5 – 6 th string/5 th fret). Right, we have our root note. Where do we find the 2nd degree? Two frets up from the root (just like in the table), so 6th string 7th fret (the scale so far – 6/5, 6/7).

However, because of the construction of the guitar fretboard, I can also find the same tone one string higher on the A string. Because there are 5 frets difference between the E and the A, I can take the interval away and get the number of frets LOWER on the A string – (Base + 2 frets)-5 (difference in frets between strings) = Base-3 frets, but 1 string higher. We started on the 5th fret of the low E, so the other position is 1 string higher – the A string – and 3 frets lower (5 – 3 = 2nd fret), so 5/2 (instead of 6/7, which is exactly the same pitch).

The third is 4 frets up from the root (in this case, the 5th fret) – 6/9 – but no-one is going to stretch 4 frets voluntarily. We should, therefore, look one string higher – Root+4 frets (3rd interval) -5 (frets difference between the strings) = 1 string higher and 1 fret lower (5/4). Our sequence, so far, looks like this – 6/5, 6/7, 5/4 (I could also have used 6/5, 5/2, 5/4).

The 4th degree is 5 frets up from the root, but if no-one is going to stretch 4 frets, they’re not going attempt 5, so we have to, again, go to the next string – Root+5 frets (4th interval) -5 frets difference between the strings = same fret, but one string higher. (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5).

The 5th is 7 frets up from the root. So, Root+7-5 (frets to next string) = 2. So the 5th degree is on the next higher string and 2 frets higher than the root note. – (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5, 5/7).

Rather than go through each calculation, let’s just jump to the octave. This is 12 frets higher than the root, so we have to factor in more than 1 string (each being 5 frets difference), i.e. Root+12-5=7, which is still too much of a stretch, so we have to take the jump to the next string and deduct another 5 frets from the answer: Root+12-5-5 = 2. So, we have to go 2 strings higher (5 + 5) and up 2 frets. – I’ve filled in the other notes in the major scale and you get this – (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5, 5/7, 4/4, 4/6, 4/7 – play it, it’s the A major scale).

One thing that I have not yet included, in the calculation, is the G string. Don’t panic, it’s no problem. Whenever you cross the G to B string (or vice versa), you have to calculate 4 frets between strings, rather than 5. Instead of 2 strings being 5 + 5, you have to calculate 5 + 4 and find the remaining frets. So an octave is 12 – 5 – 4 = 3 – two strings and three frets higher. Why don’t you fill the major scale, that I started, all the way up to the high E string, taking care not to forget the dastardly G-B divide!

OK, here’s a table showing all the positions:

s = string, f= fret. 0= same, so 0s = same string

The column “G/B” denotes the difference, wherever the interval spans the G-B divide.

The method also allows you to work backwards – but instead of calculating from the root as 0, you call it 12. Going from the root to the 7th (found 11 frets up from the root): 12-11=1, so the 7th is 1 fret lower than the root. The calculation of moving from string to string doesn’t change. Let’s say I want to find the 4 th degree of the scale, but on a lower string than the one I’m on. For argument’s sake, we’ll assume that we’re on the root note and to make the calculation easy, at 4/7 (4 th string/7 th fret). The 4 th degree is 5 frets up from the root, so 12 (rather than 0) – 5 = 7, so 7 frets lower than my current position. I can deduct 5, to bring me one string lower: 7-5=2. I still have 2 frets left so I have to go those 2 frets lower, which takes me from the 7 th fret to the 5 th on the next lower string to where we started, so I land on 5/5.

It doesn’t stop there. Just think, you have a major chord and want to play a 7th. If you don’t know the actual fingering, you have to first work out the 7th degree of the scale that you’re in, drop it by one semitone and find that note on the fretboard.

I’ll give you another way. The 7th is 11 frets up (or 2 strings and 1 fret) from the root. A 7th chord needs a flat 7th (one semitone lower than a normal 7th or an “11b” – normal 7th is 11 frets up from the root), so we need 2 strings up and 0 frets up (0-5-5+10). I know my root note, so I can find the flat 7th 2 strings higher at the same fret. As long as it isn’t the only occurrence of a triad note (R, iii, V), I only need to fret that string at the same fret as the root note and I have a 7th chord. Alternatively, I can use the reverse calculation. A 7th is one fret lower than the root, so a flat 7th is going to be 2 frets lower. I look for a note 2 frets lower than any root, other than the bass root note. It all, of course, needs to be modified, if the G-B problem arises.

Let’s build a C7. Here is our starting point, the Cmajor chord – x32010. I need the root, two strings higher, same fret. The root is on the 5th string at the 3rd fret, so I need 3rd string, 3rd fret – yep, a classical C7. From the other standpoint – there is a root note on the B string, at the 1st fret. The method says 10 up or 2 down, but 10 up is idiocy and 2 down is somewhere the wrong side of the nut – what to do? The open B string is tuned to the same note as the 4th fret of the G string, so let’s start there. The 1st fret B string is the same as 5th fret G string, which gives us: 5-2=3, 3rd string 3rd fret.

Take a Gmajor – 320003. I want a G7. So I look at the note 2 strings higher than the base root note (low E, 3rd fret), the D string – which is, unfortunately, the only occurrence of a D (5th degree) in the chord. I, then, look at another root (high E, 3rd fret) and drop 2 frets, to the 1st fret. Here is a G7 chord. This, by the way, is also 10 frets up from the root note on the 3rd string 0 fret (G): Root+10-4 (we’re crossing the G-B) -5 (B to E) =1 (1st fret, 1st string).

Once you have this in your mind, it is easy to translate any interval to the fretboard. You want a power chord? It’s made up of the root and the 5th, which is 7 frets higher than the root. Pick the root and look one string higher and 2 frets up (3, if you’re lumbered with the G-B problem). Same applies to the octave – (12 frets – 5 – 5 = 2), 2 strings higher and 2 frets ( 12 -5 – 4 = 3 for the G-B) up.

Once you have a reasonable grasp of the numbers, you can short-cut your way around the scales. How far is a 6th from a 3rd? A 6th is 9 frets up and a 3rd is 4, so the distance is 5 frets. How far is a 2nd from a flat 7th? A 7th is 11 frets up, so flatted it’s at 10. A 2nd is 2 frets up, giving us 10-2 = 8.

We can now use this knowledge to look more closely at some other scales.

The Major Scale.

What can I say? – WWHWWWH or TTSTTTS. I’ve told you how to build this.

The Minor Scales

Relative Minor – WHWWHWW

Flattens the 3rd, 6th and 7th. Easy. The sequence becomes, 0, 2, 3 (was 4, but flat, becomes 3), 5, 7, 8 (was 9, but flats to 8), 10 (was 11, but flats to 10), 12. (0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12)

Harmonic Minor – WHWWHW#H

It’s the same as the relative minor, except that the 7 th isn’t flat, which gives rise to a 3 fret gap between the 6 th and the 7 th (which I’ve shown as W#). Otherwise, it’s the relative minor – (0,2,3,5,7,8,11,12)

Melodic Minor (up) – WHWWWWH

This is the same as the major scale, but with only the 3 rd flattened, so (0,2,3,5,7,9,11,12).

Melodic Minor (down) – WHWWHW#H

Is exactly the same as the relative minor scale. (0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12)

The Major Pentatonic – WW(H+W)W(W+H)

This is the same as the major scale, with the 4th and 7th degress removed, so instead of 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, the major pentatonic consists of 0, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12

The Minor Pentatonic

This is the same as the relative minor scale, with the 2nd and 6th degress removed, so instead of 0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12, the minor pentatonic consists of 0,3,5,7,10,12

The Modes.

Ever thought of learning the mode box patterns – after you’ve learnt the major, minor, pentatonic and God knows what other patterns, of course. No need.

Modes are just major scales, which start at different positions. Take the Mixolydian, starting at the 5th degree (7 frets up – the “base fret offset”). Just modify the calculation to deduct the base fret offset – so the root of the mixolydian is the position in the major scale minus the offset (7-7=0), the 2nd degree of the Mixo mode is really the 6th degree of the major scale, but knowing the base fret offset (7) and knowing that the 6th degree of the major scale is 9 frets up, we get 9-7=2. the second position is 2 frets higher than the “root” of our mixo scale. The 3rd is at 11 on the major scale, so 11-7=4, which is probably best one string higher, but 1 fret down (just as in the major scale layout). Next comes the 4th, which is the octave of the base major scale, but we call it 12, rather than 0, because it is the octave and not the root of the original scale: 12-7= 5, which goes on the next string, same fret. The 5th of the mixo (the 2nd of the major scale) is at 14 (octave+2), so 14-7=7 – applying the original calculation, we get 1 string and 2 frets higher.

Mixolydian mode:

You can build any mode at any starting position, without even having to memorise a single box pattern.

Whether building major scales or modes, you end up with the same patterns on the fretboard as the box patterns found in any book, but this method gives you the ability to build a scale, even if your memory is not that good and you haven’t played the pattern for several months. In fact, the more you use this method, the easier it will become to build the box patterns.

One drawback of box patterns, is that they are boxes. You learn 5, effectively, separate entities. Bringing them together and using them as one large network of notes is difficult, once you’ve learnt them separately. Another problem is that most people (and I include myself) learn the boxes as they are presented on paper, almost invariably starting with the “1st pattern” at the 6th string, 5th fret – and find that changing to play the same box somewhere else on the neck is a mental challenge. This method takes you away from building box patterns and into building scales. Try building a run from the A on the low E to the higher reaches of the high E, using box patterns. You’re going to traverse at least 2, if not 3. By selectively changing strings, you can build runs, as long as you like, on one or several strings, just by adding the necessary number of frets to your last position. This is another point – as you get better with the fret intervals, you start to think also in terms of intervals between positions, within the scale (iii – IV is 1 fret in the major scale, etc.). It is, however, the number of frets from the root, which is important – it gives you the frame of reference from which to work – the root of the scale.

Although Helgi Briem has been promoting the use of intervals for, certainly, as long as I’ve been a member of GN, this only recently hit me – it was one of those “light going on” moments. Since then I’ve found building scales much easier than with a scale chart. I’m seeing why frets are played, where they are and what relevance that position has to the rest of the scale, even if it hasn’t registered what the names of the notes are. Give it a try – it really doesn’t take long to grasp.

For those of you who say that you are lousy at maths, here’s another method – left foot is the root note, right foot is the octave and your 10 fingers (and thumbs) are the positions in between – there’s absolutely no reason NOT to give it a try now, is there? ;))

Now the key to learning something new and seemingly complicated, is to discover relationships with the material using information you already know. We are going to learn the fret board by observing some of its hidden mathematical relationships. Then we will use our ability to quickly add small numbers in our head to speed up note retrieval and our memorization of the fret board.

First, the simple memorization part. To begin, we need to memorize the numerical values of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Simply number A to G#, sequentially starting from 0 and up to 11 as follows:

Now we know that the transitions from sharp to flat are enharmonic and represent the same note. Usually when ascending, the sharp notation is used, while descending, the flat notation is used, but for our purposes, it really doesn’t matter which notation you favor.

To help speed your memorization of each note value, pay particular attention to the number assignments given the natural notes A-B-C-D-E-F-G (0-2-3-5-7-8-10). Then if you need to “sharpen” a note, simply add 1. If you need to “flatten” a note, subtract 1. Note that there are no sharps or flats between B & C (2 & 3) and E & F (7 & 8).

At this point, you already know the fret that must be pressed to obtain all the notes along one string! Take a look at the A string.

Before we continue, you really need to commit to memory the values of the open-string notes on your six string guitar. That is, E-A-D-G-B-E is represented by 7-0-5-10-2-7. To help remember this sequence, think “0-5-10 between 2 7’s”. Note that the B string value is simply its string number and the A string has a value of 0.

We can use the sum of the string value and the fret number to solve for our note. Now, when you push down a fret and pick a string, just add the fret number to the string value and your result will correspond to your note. But if the sum of the string value and the fret number is 12 or greater, you must subtract 12 from your result until your number is from 0 to 11 in order to get your note.

For example, if I hold down the 4 th fret of my E string (value 7), then my sum is 7+4=11, which corresponds to G#. Of course, your speed at this will be strongly dependent on how well you committed the note values to memory. For example, when you see “D”, you need to instantly think “5″, and you need to do this without counting from 0 (A). But you will find that making this association is certainly a lot easier than trying to memorize every note along each string, or trying to count alphabetically from the open string note.

But what if the sum of the string value and the fret is 12 or greater? In this case, you will have to subtract 12 from your sum until you get a result from 0 to 11. For example, if you press the 10 th fret of the G string, your sum is 10+10=20. Simply subtract 12 from 20 to get 8, and you see your note is F. If your result is 0, that means don’t push a fret and play the string open to get your note. Refer to the following note map and try this for other notes along the fret board:

Well, this method easily tells you how to find the note you’re playing, but what you really need is a method to tell you what fret you must press to get the note you want. To use it this way, use the note value that you memorized and the string value you are on to solve for your fret number. Now if your note value is less than the value of the string you want to play it on, you must add 12 to your note value and subtract the string value to get the fret number to press.

For example, if you want the D note on the B string, you know that D has a value of 5 and the B string has a value of 2. To determine the fret number, simply ask yourself “What number must I add to 2 (the B string value) in order to equal 5 (my note)?” The answer is 3, so you press the 3 rd fret of the B string to get 5 (D note).

But what if the note you are looking for has a value less than the string value you wish to play it on? In this case, you must add 12 to your note value to solve for your fret number. For example, I want the B note on the G string. The B note has a value of 2, while the G string has a value of 10. So I must first add 12 to 2 to get 14. Then ask yourself, what number must be added to 10 (G string) to get 14? The answer is 4, so you press fret 4 of the G string in order to get your B note.

Of course, this will take some practice, but what you will soon discover is that it will actually speed your memorization of the fret board and your ability to randomly access your notes. Eventually you will just know where to go, almost without thinking about it. After you’ve memorized the value of each note from A to G#, as 0 through 11, you should practice trying to retrieve each note on each string.

For example, start with A and find A on each string, then try Bb, followed by C, and so on, for every note. Think of each string in terms of its open note value. Your fret board has markers at the 3 rd , 5 th , 7 th , 9 th , and 12 th fret. It also has marks at the 15 th , 17 th , 19 th , and 21 st fret. Use the fret board marks to quickly find your fret number.

So what is the significance of the string values? Note that 12 minus the numbers 7-0-5-10-2-7 (E-A-D-G-B-E) actually represent the fret number that must be pressed on each of the strings to hit the A note. That is, these numbers simply represent an index offset from 12 to the A note on each string.

Here are some other observations to help you navigate the fret board. We use the term “octave” to refer to the interval between two notes of which one note is at exactly twice the frequency of another note. When referring to the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, an octave refers to the 12 note transitions between a note and itself one octave higher. The same note one octave higher will actually have a string vibration (frequency) twice that of the original note. Thus, you know that by adding 12 to your fret number along any string will give you the same note one octave higher.

Now we have to establish a sense of direction. When I move up in pitch, I shift from the top string (low E string 6) towards the bottom string (high E string 1). Further, when I move up the fret board, I shift down the neck from the nut. The common element here is that shifting up corresponds to raising the pitch, even though I’m physically moving down the neck and down the strings.

Now that we got that straight, if you shift up two strings and up two frets, you will also get the octave of your note. But if when shifting strings, you happen to land on either of the first two strings (the B and high E strings), then you must shift up 3 frets instead of 2 to get the same note one octave higher. Now the octave of a note found by shifting 12 frets along the same string is equivalent to the octave of the same note found by shifting up 2 strings and 2 frets (or 2 strings and 3 frets if you land on the B or high E string).

So we see that every octave has a redundant position on the fret board. Further, we see that the fret board covers each note at least one octave above and one octave below it. Likewise, most of the notes also have a redundant position on the fret board. Note that the 5 th fret of every string (except between strings 2 & 3) is equal to the adjacent string’s note played open. We sometimes use this relationship to tune string to string after having tuned only one reference string. Now between strings 2 & 3 we must shift one fret lower – that is the 4 th fret of string 3 is equal to the string 2 played open. So with this in mind, the high-E string is actually 2 octaves above the low-E string. So how many octaves of low E can we find? What if you press the 12 th fret of the high E string? This is the 3 rd octave of low E. If your guitar happens to have 24 frets, then you can get the 4 th octave of low E as well.

Now you have a simple method for random note access, but with all the redundancy and note octaves, you still need to know that you’re playing the right note, or the right octave of a note. Without getting too complicated with regard to music theory, you know that symbols are positioned on the staff to indicate which note must be played. With respect to reading music, remember that the bottom line of our staff (5 lines) corresponds to the E note. Each staff line above or below represents a shift of two natural notes. Now with respect to the E note, we have another E one octave above and another E one octave below. With two note transitions for every line space of the staff, one octave on the staff spans the space of 4 lines. So E one octave higher is a span of 4 lines above the bottom line, E one octave lower is a span of 4 lines below the bottom line. So, what string and fret do we play for a symbol that intersects the bottom line of our staff? This is the E that occurs on the 2 nd fret of the D string (it also has a redundant position somewhere else). The E one octave higher will occur on the 5 th fret of the B string, or the again on the high-E string played open (remember the fifth fret is the higher adjacent string played open). So what about the E note that occurs on the 7 th fret of the A string? This is the same as the E played on the 2 nd fret of the adjacent D string (where we started). See the redundancy. Play the two notes on your guitar. If you’re tuned properly, they should sound the same.

Now refer to the note table and notice all the redundant notes as you move along the fret board! You must train your fingers to take advantage of this redundancy and always seek the path of least resistance when switching between notes. The next part of this lesson will help you to navigate note to note and identify some relationships that you can use to discriminate a note from its octave or its copy.

If you made it this far, here is some more food for thought that will help reinforce your memorization of the fret board (and it will even introduce you to the circle of fifths). In this next exercise, what we will attempt to do is to complete a fret map by noting the simple mathematical relationships that exist between notes on adjacent strings (and between adjacent notes arranged in the order of the circle of fifths).

Begin by constructing a table containing 6 columns and 12 rows. Number the columns from left to right to correspond to your strings from 6 to 1 (in order of increasing pitch). Label each row at the left with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale as shown below. Then place an 8 in the upper left-hand corner of your table at the intersection of the C row and 6 th string as shown below. The 8 refers to the fret you must press on the 6 th string to get C.

An easy way to remember the order of the 12 notes in the leftmost column is by memorizing the phrase:

Christian Girls Dig Angels Even Before Fat# Christian# Girls# Evenb Beforeb Flat

Note the pound symbol (#) after “Fat Christian Girls” that denotes a sharp, and the flat symbol (b) in “Even Before” Flat. The ordering of these notes is also significant, as it follows the order of the circle of fifths (more on this later).

Now what we want to do is fill out the table with the fret numbers that must be pressed in order to play each note at the left on the string above. But for the purposes of this exercise, we will not use the string values we learned in the prior lesson.

Instead, we will derive the fret numbers using the relationship that every adjacent fret number is found by either subtracting 5 or adding 7. We determine whether to add 7 or subtract 5 by obtaining a result that must be a number from 0 to 11. We know by now that the interval between the 3 rd and 2 nd string is always treated differently, so we will constrain our focus to the four strings at the left and doing the math starting from 8.

Using our relationship, the boxes adjacent to 8 must be filled by either (8-5) or (8+7). Since our result must be a number from 0 to 11, we choose to subtract 5 and our result is 3. So we place 3 in the two boxes adjacent to 8. Now the boxes adjacent to 3 are derived the same way. Here we choose to add 7 to get 10. Continue to fill out all the boxes of the first four columns this same way. For the last column (the high E string), we use the shortcut knowing that these fret numbers must be equal to the fret numbers of the first column (low E string).

Now we have one more column to fill. Derive the string 2 column by doing the opposite of what we did for the first 4 columns, and start from the last column (high E). That is, we will either subtract 7 or add 5 to each number in the rightmost column to get the adjacent number in column 2. Fill each box of column 2 this way. Now you should have a complete map that tells you what fret you must press to get each note of the chromatic scale on each string as follows:

Bonus exercise – fill out the same table using the note values learned in the first part of this lesson.

So why did we do this? There are some patterns here that we can use. Note that for the first 4 columns, the adjacent column is found by shifting the numbers up one box and placing the number that shifted off the top, at the bottom of the adjacent column. Only between strings 3 and 2 are things handled differently. Here column 2 is found by shifting the numbers of column 6 down 1 and bringing the number shifted off the bottom to the top. But this visual pattern is not what I’m looking for. Instead, look at the fret numbers for the same note as we move across the strings. Notice that the fret always shifts by 7 or 5, except between strings 3 and 2, where it shifts by 8 or 4.

Now look back at the note table in the first part of this lesson. Note that if you pick a note on any string, and you shift up to the adjacent string (you shift up in the direction of increasing pitch), you get the octave of the note by shifting your fret up by 7 on the adjacent string. You get the redundant (copy) of the note by shifting your fret number down by 5. But if you are shifting from string 3 to string 2, you shift your fret up by 8 to get the octave, and you shift your fret down by 4 to get a redundant copy of your note.

Now referring back to the fret map, you can identify the octave shifts and the redundant copies using this same relationship. That is, as you up shift across the table, if the fret increases by 7, you hit the octave. If the fret decreases by 5, you hit a copy. This is true for any transition, except between strings 3 and 2, where the octave is found by up shifting 8, and the copy by down shifting 4. The following fret table uses the ^ symbol to identify a shift in octave as you shift across the strings:

Notice that every note has two octaves as you move up in pitch from the low E string to the high E string (and you stay within 11 frets). Also note that there are a lot of redundant copies of notes, first octaves, and second octaves that you can take advantage of (the copies are bold boxed in the table). But if we are constrained only to the first 11 frets, some notes will not have a redundant copy (see low E, F, F#, G, G#–the first five notes on the low E string). However, every first octave does have at least one redundant copy. But not every second octave includes a redundant copy if we are constrained to the first 11 frets (see C, B, C#, D, Eb).

Because we already know that the sequence of fret and string combinations repeats itself one octave higher beginning at the 12 th fret, we have focused on all the note combinations formed up to the 11 th fret. We’re going to continue to focus on all the combinations up to the 11 th fret, but let’s take inventory. We know we have 6 strings and 11 frets, so this gives us 6×12=72 possible combinations of string and fret. Now, we’ve also seen that every note has exactly two octaves below the 12 th fret. 12 notes + 12 first octaves + 12 second octaves = 36. So we actually have 72-36=36 redundancies. That’s a lot to keep track of, but use the relationships we’ve identified to discern octaves and copies.

That is, as we up shift strings, we have a first octave by shifting 7 frets up on the first string shift, or two frets up if we shift 2 strings up (both of these octaves are equivalent). We have to make an adjustment on string 2 by adding 1 fret. We also have the copy of a note by down shifting 5 frets on the first string shift (or down shifting 4 frets to get the copy if we land on the B string).

So what exactly is the circle of fifths? We’ll save this for another lesson, except to say that in the circle of fifths, each adjacent note moving clockwise (starting with C in the 12 o’clock position) represents the fifth note in a major scale of the prior note. That is, G is the fifth note of a C major scale, D is the fifth note of a G major scale, and so on, moving clockwise around the circle.

I hope you found this information helpful. There sure is a lot of math in music! My hope is that by showing you some of these relationships, you can use this information to really get to know the fret board. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts for practice, and to really affect your play, you simply have to practice.

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 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

Chords are usually labeled with Roman numerals; capital letters mean major chords, lower-case letters means minor. The other chord symbols (+ for augmented, º for diminished, etc.) get added to the Roman numerals. Roman numerals are handy, because they make easy transposition… I-IV-V can be thought of in any key – it takes less work to go from C-F-G to Eb-Ab-Bb if you think in terms of scale degrees. I’ll use Roman numerals throughout this piece.

Harmonizing Scales To Get Chords

Chords in any key are built on the steps of the scale. To start with, let’s look at a harmonized scale in triads (all the examples will be in C):

And harmonized to seventh chords:

I’ll talk only about major keys here, but all the ideas can be applied to minor keys as well – just use the minor scale notes to create the chords.

Playing through those chords one by one, you’ll see that any chord sounds complete by itself, except the chords built on V (when harmonized as V7) or vii (as either viiº or vii7b5). These two chords have a lot of tension in them, and they want to move, or ‘resolve’ to another chord to sound complete.

Cadences

Chords naturally want to move down by fifths – that is, the root is going to move five steps down the scale. A V7 chord will naturally want to move to a I chord; that’s true of major keys where V7 –> I, and minor keys where V7 –> i. This is the strongest resolution in music, and it’s called the authentic cadence.

G7-C G7-Cm

V7 –> I V7 –> i

Moving down by a fifth (G-C) is the same as moving up by a fourth:

so chord movement by fourths is also very common. The change IV –> I gives almost as strong a sense of closure as V7 –> I, and it’s called the plagal cadence. You probably recognize that sound – it’s sometimes called the ‘Amen’ cadence because of its use in church music.

F-C

IV –> I

Since these cadences sound so complete, they are used at the end of chord progressions. Almost all chord progressions will end up on the I chord.

The Natural Harmonic Series

Because chords want to move down by a fifth, we can line them all up in order to create what’s known as the natural harmonic series. This flow will sound very natural to the ear:

Bº Em Am Dm G7 C

viiº –> iii –> vi –> ii –> V –> I

The IV chord can be tacked on to the end, and it will usually go back to I:

Bº Em Am Dm G7 C F C

viiº –> iii –> vi –> ii –> V –> I?IV

Most jazz music is based on the natural harmonic series, with the ii –> V –> I progression being used frequently.

Dm7 G7 Cmaj7

ii –> V –> I

The Blues Progression

Blues music has developed into a standard 12-bar format. Although you can have blues progressions that use other formats, just about all of them will use the I, IV, and V chords in this pattern:

The V in parenthesis in the last measure is called a ‘turnaround’… if you’re going to do another chorus, the V leads back into the I chord at the start of the progression. The last time through, you stay on the I chord through the final measure.

These two chord progressions, the ii-V-I from jazz, and the I-IV-I-V-IV-I from blues, form the core of most music you hear today. Now let’s start dressing them up…

Chord Extensions

We looked at how chords can be built by harmonizing the major scale in triads and seventh chords – we don’t have to stop there! 9 th , 11 th , and 13 th chords can be substituted as extensions.

Chords get extended by keeping them in the same chord type – for a C chord you can use Cmaj7, Cmaj9; Am can become Am7, Am11… G7 can become G13, G9, etc.

The Secondary Dominant Principle

The V7 chord wants to move down by a fifth, to a I chord. What if we make that a I7 chord instead?

G7 –> C7

V7 –> I7

That change sounds pleasing, because the chord root is moving as an authentic cadence… but it doesn’t sound complete, because the final chord is Domnant. That C7 wants to resolve someplace, and the natural place is a fifth lower:

G7 –> C7 –> F

V7 –> I7 –> IV (in C, or)

II7 –> V7 –> I (in F)

We can string together a whole bunch of 7 th chords, and lead eventually to a final resolution. In the key of C, the D chord is usually minor, but a D7 chord will sound good if we resolve it like this:

C –> D7 –> G7 –> C

I –> II7 –> V7 –> I

The reason this works is that we’ve temporarily moved to the key of G… D7 is the V chord in G. Since G is the V chord in C, we call the D7 the ‘V of V chord’. This temporary key change is called a modulation, and it allows us to use chords outside of the home key:

Substitutions

The principles of extension, natural harmonic series, and secondary dominants can be used to substitute chords and dress up a progression. Let’s say the basic chord progression is C-F-G7-C for one measure each:

C F G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

We can plug in a secondary dominant:

C F D7 G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

or turn that G7 measure into a ii-V-I progression:

C F Dm G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

We can add extensions:

C Cmaj7 F Fmaj7 Dm7 G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

And since the authentic cadence can be either V-I or V-i, we can use a secondary dominant to step into any major or minor chord in the progression:

C Cmaj7 F A7 Dm7 G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

In that last example, the A7 is quite a leap from the F, but it’s the V of D (or D minor), which is the V of G… which is the V of C.

Chromatic Steps

Other chords outside the key can be used effectively. Although the introduction of an ‘outside’ chord will initially jar our ears, it’s what you do with it that matters in the end. Chord can be approached by a chromatic half step, either between to chords a step apart (as a passing chord):

C F F# G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

or this:

C C#m7 Dm7 G7 C
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

Or we can ‘overshoot’ a chord change, and step down:

Cmaj7 Fmaj7 Ab9 G9 Cmaj7
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |

Using these substitutions can bring you hundreds of new progressions. If there’s enough interest in this topic, I’ll write another one on the use of altered chords, like E7#9b5.

Also in this Series

• Extended Chords
• Altered States
• Chord Substitution

First, lets go through some basics:

Interval is a distance between two notes measured by number of semitones, or half-steps. On the guitar, one fret represents a semitone. Twelve frets make an octave. Some intervals extend above the octave. Those are called compound intervals. For example: the major 3rd (normally 4 frets), when placed an octave higher, becomes the major 10th (4+12=16 frets). The exact number of semitones (frets) is called the interval quality. This is what gives an interval its full name and sound.

The following table explains the simple / compound interval relationship and the number of frets for each interval.

Now we’re going to apply this table of intervals to a guitar neck. Let’s look at basic guitar tuning in terms of intervals. The string pairs (that is, each string in coupled with the next higher string) 6/5, 5/4, 4/3 and 2/1 make Perfect 4th (5 frets). 3/2 string pair makes Major 3rd (4 frets). You already know this if you can manually tune your guitar.

So, the interval between Low E and High E would be 5+5+5+4+5=24 frets (two octaves).

Using this knowledge we can easily find the interval between any two notes on any two strings at the same fret. Fig.1 explains this graphically:

1st fret F-to-F : 5+5+5+4+5=24 frets (2 octaves)

4th fret G#-to-F# : 5+5=10 frets (Minor 7th)

5th fret E-to-A : 5frets (Perfect 4th)

8th fret F-to-G : 5+5+4=14 frets (Major 9th)

10th fret F-to-D : 4+5=9 frets (Major 6th)

In each of the above examples, we moved vertically through the string pairs, adding string pair intervals along the way. Let’s call it the “vertical movement.” We were able to build many types of intervals. But there are still many other types of intervals. How do we get those?

To be able to build all interval types we have to move horizontally as well as vertically. The horizontal movement is simple: we move right to add frets; we move left to subtract frets. It is possible to add or subtract one, two or three frets. More than three frets would get the left hand ‘overstretched’. Fig.2 explains the “horizontal movement” graphically:

1st fret F-to-A : 5+5+5+1=16 frets (Major 10th)

4th fret G#-to-G# : 5+5+2=12 frets (Octave)

5th fret E-to-F# : 5-3=2 frets (Major 2nd)

8th fret F-to- F# : 5+5+4-1=13 frets (Minor 9th)

10th fret F-to-E : 4+5+2=11 frets (Major 7th)

In these examples we moved vertically through the string pairs then horizontally along a single string. Note that in some examples we moved left to add frets, in other examples we moved right to subtract frets.

So, now every possible interval is within our reach. It is not even necessary to know the note names, just pick first note and find the second one counting the right number of frets. We can always go to the table of intervals for reference.

I believe that this simple method can be useful in many ways: building chord shapes, analyzing scale ‘boxes’ for ‘double stops’, harmonizing scales and runs, and much more.

Happy guitar playing.

The focus of this article is how to get chord voicings that are different from the old standard ones that are made in the open positions of a standard tuned guitar. You know, E (major), A (major), and D (major), etc.

The idea came about for this article because, again, I was jamming with a friend of mine, trying to stubbornly impart some of my knowledge. Just a little knowledge that I thought would help us cope with the others’ chord changes and riffing without too much thought.

Simple Chord Shapes

What I have found in my beginner’s stage of playing guitar and jamming is how do I get some of the chords that are in the same range as what my friend is playing on the guitar?

The application of finding different voicings of the same chord arises from using the same simple shapes of chords that you will find within the first three or four frets on the fretboard – or is it fingerboard? Let’s begin with E, seen below in Figure 1, beside the chord diagrams for A and D.

You can see in the above diagram of the chord E where the frets are fretted on the fretboard, which strings ring open, and what the notes are played on each string (below the diagram). Remember that a major chord is made up of a major triad, three notes. These notes come from the chord name’s major scale and are the 1st or root, the major 3rd and the fifth. The major 3rd is simply the 3rd note of the major scale. A minor third would be a half step below that.

The rest of the major chords within the first four frets are shown in Figure 2:

Please take note that while all of the major chords within the first four frets are provided above in Figures 1 and 2, there are other some other chord voicings for these chords within that area. One such chord I can think of is:

When I use the type of shape above, the chord shape for E (see Figure 1), where I fret notes with the lowest fretted string being the fifth, I call it an “E Shape” as seen in Figure 4. I do not know if anybody else calls it this. Later you will see this shape used to make other chords.

The first thing you can do with this “E Shape” is move it up and down the neck of the guitar to different frets as in Figure 4. Always keep the finger closest to your head on the fifth string. This is marked below with the circle on the mentioned fret placement on the diagrams. The diagram below on the left is the “E Shape” used in place to make the open position E chord. The diagram below on the right is the placement of the “E Shape” with the circled fret placement at the second (to form E), fifth, seventh, and ninth frets. The fret markers are show for the fifth, seventh, ninth and twelfth frets.

If you have not already noticed at this point, these fingerings do not make major chords (or if they do you must really work hard think of their major chord name) and I am not going to name them in this article. The point is to demonstrate that the “E Shape” is transferable up and down the neck to form “good” (by personal preference) sounding chords.

Making Use of the “E Shape”

So how do you make use of the “E Shape”?

It is quite easy in theory. It takes quite a bit of practice to get a good bar chord. You use a finger bar to make a bar chord. To make and A chord use the chord diagram given below in Figure 5. I have read and practiced what I think is the easiest way to make a bar chord. Placed the fingers that are higher up the fretboard down first. After the higher fingers are placed then place your index finger down to bar the fretboard. You will find that you may find some fret buzz – work through it by moving your finger and pressing down tightly with your index finger.

To follow these steps using the diagram below do the following:

• Place your pinkie (4th) finger on the fifth string, seventh fret
• Place your ring (3rd) finger on the fourth string, seventh fret
• Place your middle (2nd) finger on the third string, sixth fret
• Place your index (1st) finger as a bar across all of the strings, fifth fret
• (You should check out other musical sources for specific fingering diagrams.)

The notes for this A major chord are also given in the diagram below, Figure 5. You can compare it to the often-used chord voicing of A above in Figure 1. Give both of them a few strums to hear the difference in how they sound. The chord voicing for the A given below should sound a noticeable higher and even a little more upbeat when compared to the chord voicing for A in Figure 1.

How do I use the “E Shape” further? Simply move the whole shape, bar included, up to the seventh fret. Now I mean that the bar moves up to the seventh fret. The circled fret placement moves up to the ninth fret as in the chord diagram for B in Figure 5 above.

So as you can see you just have to move the whole shape a fret or two to get a new chord. You may have even noticed that the “E Shape” was evident in the second chord voicing of F in Figure 2. Go back up to Figure 2 and have a look. You will see the same shape as seen in Figure 5 above. Do not forget to make a bar chord using the process I described three paragraphs above in bullet form.

You can easily get 7 chords by using the “E Shape” with the circled fret placement on the fifth string. The high E chord voicing with the bar on the 12th fret will be hard to make on most acoustic guitars. If you have a Stratocaster type guitar you might even be able to get this type of bar chord with bar all the way up on the 15th fret – that is a G chord.

Other Chord Shapes

You may have asked yourself “What about the other chord shapes?” These are all applicable, some requiring more practice than others. You can use the “A Shape” from the A chord in Figure 1 as well as the “D Shape”. Do not be intimidated by the difficulty of the shape. Practice will allow you hands to form almost all shapes almost anywhere between the nut and the 12th fret or above if you have an electric guitar.

How do you find where you should put the bar when using the bar chords?

Let’s look at Figure 1 again.

The key to using this method to getting different chord voicings easily is looking at the fretted notes in relation to the nut. With the E chord one there is one note fretted after the nut on the 3rd string 1st fret in the “E Shape”. This means that the bar in the bar chord with fall immediately behind the note that is on the lowest fret.

Let’s first talk a little bit about natural notes (or tones). A natural tone is one of the notes that does not have a sharp or a flat in it. Those notes that do have sharps or flats are called accidentals. So the naturals are: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. An accidental would be C# or Cb (C flat).

To make the next available chord that uses a natural note as its root, shift the “E Shape” up one fret and bar all the strings on the 1st fret. This gives us an F chord. See Figure 2 above. You should have a real grasp of using the “E Shape” now so you should try using it on your guitar.

Once you have done that, move on to the “A Shape”. You can see above that the lowest fret fretted is the second. That means that when you use the “A Shape” to make a bar chord the bar must be two frets behind the “A Shape”. See Figure 6 below. You will notice that I have dispensed with that circled fretted note in this figure.

Take note that the easiest way may be to use two bars when using the “A Shape”. However, you may find that you want to use your last three fingers to hold down the “A Shape” and of course your index finger to make the bar. Using your last three fingers to make the “A Shape” provides you with certain advantages if you can eventually get your fingers to stretch that way. You can easily make 7th chords by removing your ring finger. This would be removing the middle dot from the small bar diagram above.

That is right, I snuck in a little variation on your basic “A Shape”. Theoretically you can do this with all of your “Shapes”. If you remove certain fretted notes from the diagram you end up with different chords. Look below at Figure 7. Take note of the blank circles where there used to be solid circles. These are where you can remove your fingers to make other chords that vary on the original at that position. Also note that the solid dot has been marked on the bar made by the index finger.

You should have noticed in Figure 7 that I added something a little different by using an “A minor Shape”. The base of the “A minor Shape” is actually the same shape as the “E Shape”. However, when the “E Shape” is used, by shifting your fingers by one string you can form the chord A Minor. See Figure 8 below.

Placing the “Chord Shapes”

How do find the chord you need quickly? One method is to memorize the fretboard’s natural notes. To do this easily, I use “bands” of natural notes on the fretboard. These bands of natural notes occur in quite a few places between the nut and the 12th fret. After the 12th fret the fretboard repeats itself. If you have already read my article called Basic Music Theory you should already have a map of the fretboard to use.

If you do not have a map of the fretboard then I recommend you make one. I have written fretboards in a couple of different ways. The first way was with all the notes – both naturals and accidentals. I find it easier to read the map of the fretboard if I list only the natural notes. One way to write out a fretboard is provide in Figure 9. Another way to write it out is vertically; turn the fretboard of figure 9 clockwise 90 degrees.

You can see that “bands” of natural notes appear at frets 5, 10 and 12. Places where there are natural notes almost all the way across the fingerboard occur at the 3rd and 7th frets. These are also good to remember as “bands” of notes including the accidentals with them. A diagram with both types of “bands” would look as Figure 10 does below.

Now that you know you can use a few different shapes see if you can find a voicing of G that uses the “D Shape” as seen in Figures 1 and 8.

Figure 10 will also come in handy when you are trying to find the right spot to start all of your scales. Of course you will need a little alteration to place such scales as the C Major scale beginning with the 8th fret of the 6th string. I leave the rest up to you.

Experimentation

I thought I would just let you know that one of the experiments that helped me to realize that I could use “Chord Shapes” in this way was using alternate tunings. I like to play with the blues and often would tune my guitar to open tunings. One such tuning is Open D. Its strings are tuned low to high: D, A, D, F#, A, D. This allows for very simple formation of major chords.

To form a major chord with an open tuning you bar at each fret – just one bar across at each fret. If you draw another fretboard tuned to Open D you can see D by strumming the open strings, E by barring at the second fret, F by barring at the third fret, and so on. This is what led me to realize the use of “Chord Shapes” and bar chords to easily find alternate voicings of different chords.

So experiment as much as you can with your guitar. Warnings about open tunings: be careful about tuning your guitar to an open tuning that puts more tension on your strings than would normally be on them. Also be careful about changing the tuning all the time as this may possibly cause unwanted twisting or other damage to your guitar. There are articles on Guitar Noise and the Internet that can inform you about alternate tunings. You should also check with the manufacturer of your guitar just to make sure if your tunings are going to place more tension on guitar than you would normally have.

Basic Chords

The simplest chords are based on having only three notes in them. On a guitar you will start to learn by letting the strings on your guitar ring by bringing your pick or thumb across 6, 5 or 4 strings.

Below are some chord diagrams for three chords, E major, A major and D minor. When musicians talk about major chords they simplify the names by just calling them by their letter names (see below). Minor chords are indicated by the capital letter of the chord plus a small case “m” beside the capital letter as in D minor: Dm.

The chord diagrams below are standard chord diagrams. The strings on a standard tuned guitar are E A D G B E, left to right.

The thick dark line is the nut or the zero fret on the guitar.

The guitar player places their fingers on the strings where the dots are placed.

“O” above the indicated string means that that string is played with the other strings but is let ring “open”.

“X” above the indicated string means that string is not played or it is actually muted. Do not worry about muting the strings if they are on the bass side of the guitar. Just do not strum them with the other strings.

One way to play a C major chord (or just C as commonly written) is given below.

Remember that the statement above says that the simplest chords are based on having only three notes in them. You may have noticed that more than three strings are ringing in chords you strum. That is because some notes occur more than once in the chord. They may have different pitch or frequency but they are the same note.

So now the questions arise

• How do I know what notes are which in a major chord?” and
• What does the word ‘major’ mean in the term ‘major chord’?”

The answer lies in what is called chord theory. Only basic chord theory is discussed here. Still, this can seem to beyond your grasp before you begin to understand it.

Major Scales

Most people begin playing piano with an introduction to where “middle C” is and how to play the C major scale. You can find one of the C notes on you guitar on the second string, first fret. If you have trouble finding it just look at the C chord diagram above and you will see a dot on the second string from the right.

A scale covers one octave. An octave covers the notes within a range of 12 semi-tones above it. Hard to understand? Just look at the C note of the second string first fret and then count up the string 12 frets (semi-tones) and you arrive at the note C an octave above the previous C.

I would diagram the fret board but I believe that going between the paper and the guitar is necessary for the learning process.

Now, what are the notes in a C major scale? The notes in C major scale are:

C D E F G A B C.

Take a second look at where these notes are on the fret board. If you do not know where to fret the string you will in a second. There is a formula for the major scale, a pattern if you will.

Each fret is a semi-tone away from the next fret. Two frets away means that the note is a full tone away from the next note. The C major scale is the only major scale that has no notes that are sharps or flats.

That makes the C major scale pattern as follows:

When you look at the fret board it looks like this (this fret board is sideways to save space):

You would actually fret the C note here, where the dot is:

These dots are the position markers for the 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th frets on the fret board:

Homework interrupt:

At this point I suggest writing out the fret board on a piece of loose-leaf paper. I find it easiest if you write the fret board out vertically as if you were looking at the guitar standing up. (This is the way standard chord diagrams are written.) Just turn the above diagram 90 degrees clockwise. The fret board should have six columns of notes and room for 20 to 22 frets depending upon your guitar. The fret board repeats itself at the 12th fret.

A standard tuned guitar will be tuned:

Quick Review

Now you know the C major scale, where the C major scale is on the second string on the guitar, the formula for every major scale (T, T, ST, T, T, T, ST – remember these are the intervals between notes), and you should have a map of the whole fret board of your guitar. The map of the fret board will help you when you are looking for different ways to play the same chord.

Notes of the C (Major) Chord:

Simple major chords are called major triads. Triad refers to the chord being made up of three notes. The three notes of a major triad are the 1st, major 3rd, and 5th of the root note’s major scale. The C major scale is labeled below in terms of what the numbers are:

For the moment do not bother wondering about why some of the Roman numerals are capitals and others are small case and the majors, minors, dom and what the rest of the stuff means on the third line of the list above; just take note of the number. You may write in the regular numbers if you like. That makes the C chord made up of C, E and G.

That makes a C (major chord) made up of C – the 1 or the root (I), E – the major 3rd (iii), and G – the 5th (V). Now that you have your fret board map you can see where these notes are fretted in the open position chord. What is an open position chord? A open position chord is a chord that has one or more strings that are let ring open when played. Look at the C chord below. The notes played on each string are given below the respective strings.

The second C chord shown above and to the right is a 3rd position chord because the lowest fret that is fretted in the chord is the 3rd fret. Take note that it is not the lowest note that is fretted that determines the position of the chord; it is the lowest fret fretted.

Notice that there is a note with sharp in the D chord. D is the 1st note, F# is the major 3rd, and A is the 5th note in the D major scale. The D major scale looks like:

So you begin to see that you can figure out the notes for all of the major chords by figuring out the major scales for each root of the scale and taking the 1st, major 3rd, and 5th of the major scale. When you place the chords on the fret board the notes will match up with the notes in the chord diagrams. You can do this with any major chord to figure out its notes.

Homework interrupt:

At this point you should figure out all of the major scales for just the roots that do not have sharps or flats in them (to clarify: the major scales of C, D, E, F, G, A, and B). The scales for the roots of C and D have been provided but you should write them out on a piece of paper anyway. You should write out all of the scales in order of occurrence on the fret board: C major scale, D major scale, E major scale, F major scale and so on.

Hint: You may have asked yourself how do I know when to put in a sharp or a flat for that matter. For the moment when figuring out the above listed major scales, use all sharps.

Note: There is a semi-tone between all notes that are two frets apart. That means that there is another note between A and B; that note is A#/Bb. (The small case “b” is often used as the flat symbol in standard word-processor programs because it is faster to use it than inserting a symbol or it is simply not available.) A# and Bb are the same note. That extends to other notes such as C#/Db, D#/Eb, etc. TAKE NOTE THAT E# is F and Fb is E; B# is C and Cb is B. THIS MEANS THAT THERE IS NO SEMI-TONE between E and F or between B and C.

When you end with the B major scale and look at all of the scales you should notice that some scales have more sharps than others. When you have the scales written one under the other in the order of C, D, E, F, G, A, and B the number of sharps in the scales do not increase in order.

HERE COMES THE INTERESTING PART – When you put the scales in the sequential order of number of sharps, low to high this sequence has a particular property. All of the scales are now five notes away from each other. If you place the roots of the scales in a semi-circle you have half of what is called “The Circle of Fifths” or “The Cycle of Fifths.”

How does this make a difference to me?

There are many songs that are totally based upon or have sections based upon The Circle of Fifths. Just look at some of the music from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, even up through to current day.

When you finish the other half of The Circle of Fifths you will a complete circle that allows you to see all of the major keys in the order of sharps and flats.

Look up more information on the Internet about chord theory, The Circle of Fifths and scales.

But augmented and diminished chords are, as the cliche goes, another kettle of fish. Just the names, “augmented” and “diminished,” give one pause. Do I need a special degree or extra study to employ one of these chords?

Not at all! You may not know it, but augmented and diminished chords are not all that much harder to learn than “ordinary” chords. Chances are that they are simply unfamiliar to you, since they don’t tend to pop up in songs all that often. They used to, though! Pop songs of the thirties and forties were filled with them. Motown and groups like the Beatles used them in the sixties. How often you come across these chords really depends on what type of music you listen to. And for the songwriter, these chords can open so many doors that it’s positively overwhelming!

So let’s take a look at them, 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.

Leading You By The Ear

First, if you aren’t familiar with how chords, be they major, minor, augmented or diminished, are formed, then you might want to take a moment and peruse two old columns of mine called The Musical Genome Project and The Power of Three. I think you’ll find both pieces an easy read. And while you’re at it, take the time to go over Five To One, as the ideas there are going to be essential to the topic at hand.

And if you’re ready, let’s take a look at an old friend, the C major scale:

You may not have thought about this much before, but which note ends the C major scale? Depending on your personality, you either said “C” or “B” and I’m willing to bet that the majority of you picked the first answer. Either answer is fine; one could just as easily argue that there is no end of the scale – it just goes on and on…

But those of you who went with “C” probably did so for a good reason. It sounds like we’ve finished the scale. If you end on B, then you’re likely to feel that the scale is incomplete, that it’s hanging there waiting for an ending. Don’t take my word for this! Sing it or play it and hear for yourself.

This is the sense of “home” that we discussed ages ago in Five To One. And whether you know it or not, a lot of that sense of home relies on the B note, or rather, on the fact that the interval between B and C is a half step and not a whole step. In the study of music theory, half steps are often referred to leading tones. They serve to direct a voice, a melody, a solo or a chord to a specific destination. If that destination gives us a sense of home (and if not totally a sense of home, then at least a sense of respite), then we call that resolution. We even briefly touched on this in A La Modal, when we looked at the use of the C major scale in The Israelites and heard how the use of the half-step between C and C# gave us a wonderful sense of completion.

Believe it or not, most of you are already aware of how this sense of home works, even if you feel you can’t put it into words. This is why chord changes like F to C and G to C sound more complete; there’s more of a sense of finality than, say, Am to C. It’s because of the use of leading tones:

I’ve marked the leading tones here with little slash marks (“/” or “\”), which illustrate the movement of the notes. I also added G7 to this chart, to remind you of the discussion in Five To One about why G7 to C sounds even stronger than G to C – you’re using two leading tones instead of one. Is everyone with me so far? Okay, then, let’s take a look at augmented chords.

But first, I want to plant this in your brain because we’re going to want to look at it a lot in the very near future. Remember that, in Western music anyway, there are a total of twelve chromatic steps going from C to C:

That number, twelve, is going to become very important to us! So keep it in your hat, as they say, and don’t even bother to ask me who they are! By the bye, I can assume you all know that C# (number 2 in this chart) is the same as Db, right? Likewise, Eb is D#, F# is Gb, G# is Ab and Bb is A#. Got it? Good!

So now let’s take a look at Caug. As you read in The Power of Three, one makes an augmented chord by taking the root, adding a major third (the note two full step up from it) and then adding another major third. If it’s easier, just think about adding a half step to the fifth. Either way, you’ve got C, E and G# and it looks like this:

Since an augmented chord has the raised fifth, and since, in this case it’s G#, it’s a fairly safe bet that your ears want it to lead you to an A note. More often than not, an augmented chord will resolve to the fourth (F in the key of C) or the sixth (Am in the key of C. Check out these progressions and see if you don’t agree:

And these progressions are even more striking when you start with the C chord:

Can you hear how you build the tension when you change from the G in the C chord to the G# in the Caug? And then how the tension drains away when you finally get to that A note in either the Am or the F? This is a great thing for songwriters. You can use it as a melody line or, more striking still, use it as accompaniment as the melody holds on a single note common to all chords. And you don’t have to stop there! Check out this progression:

I’ve deliberately used the Fmaj7 here so that we can have sustained tones on the first two strings, namely the open E on the first string and the C note (second fret) on the B string. We start with the C to Caug to Am that we used in Example #6 and then raised the A note an additional half step to Bb, which gives us C7. Then we slip back down to A of the Fmaj7, lower that a half step to get the FmMaj7 (quite the chord, no?) and then finally get back home to our C chord.

Another thing I should point out here is that a lot of writers will use the C6 or Am7 chord (both of these chords use the same four notes: C, E, G and A) instead of plain old Am. As with so much else in music, it all depends on your own taste.

Sadly, outside of jazz, one is hard pressed to find augmented chords used with any regularity. You may find the occasional song (or songwriter – John Lennon regularly peppered his work with a well-placed augmented chord or two) where they pop up. In jazz, you’ll often find the seventh added to them. There is a moveable chord form for this and it looks like this:

Kudos to those of you who, having read my column, Moving On Up, can see the reasoning behind this. We’ve taken our E shape and adjusted the fifth, which is on the B string, accordingly moving it up a half step. The root of this chord is on both of the E strings (first and sixth), while the third is on the G and the seventh is on the D.

Now, let’s put the augmented chord on hold for a moment and take a quick look at our second feature, if you will. Diminished chords also demonstrate the importance of leading tones; perhaps even more so than the augmented chords. Think back on Example #2 and ask yourself, what’s the difference between Bdim and G7? The Bdim contains the same notes except it has not G. In other words, it’s a G7 without a root. So it will always contain two leading tones in it, depending of course on the chord to which you intend to resolve. More on that in a moment…

First a quick bit of stuff that might be confusing. It’s rare to play pure diminished chords, that is, the root, minor third and flatted fifth, on the guitar. Because the instrument is, for the most part, tuned in fourths, it’s hard to create comfortable chord voicings that use adjoining strings. That’s not to say it can’t be done. Here’s a common moveable chord for pure diminished chords:

For this moveable chord, you only want to play the three strings indicated. The root is on the A string, while the flatted fifth is on the D string and the minor third is on the B string. This particular fingering leads itself very nicely to chord progressions like this:

This is a very common progression in jazz or old pop standards. You can hear this at the beginning of We’ll Meet Again or all throughout Ain’t Misbehavin’. And it’s a terrific example of leading tones, here in the bass notes. If you start with the C major chord and then only change the C note, moving it up a half step to C# while keeping the E and G intact, you’ve then got C#dim. This resolves to Dm, from which we go to Gaug7 that will bring us back to C.

But guess what? To a jazz player, this is not a diminished chord! He or she calls it a “half diminished” chord. Why? Well, I might need the wit of Nick Torres to figure this out but I highly suspect that jazz players insist that anything good enough to be called a chord should have four notes!

So let’s remember that our diminished chord is made by taking the root, adding a minor third to it and then another minor third, which gives us the flat fifth. By the way, this flat fifth is called the tritone. It’s as far away from the root as one can get. But more on that later. For now, on top of all that we’ve got so far, let’s stick another minor third:

Technically, in terms of the major scale, we’re adding the sixth to the chord, but in music theory terms we call this a diminished seventh. The diminished seventh can easily be played on the guitar. Here’s Cdim7:

And now we’re in for some real fun! Because of the make up of the diminished seventh chord, you have all sorts of ways to resolve it! Let’s look at a Cdim7 and see a few examples:

This is all a matter of the use of leading tones. When going from Cdim7 to C, for instance, we let the C note stand pat while the Eb lead us up to E while the Gb and A collapse in on the G note. I didn’t plot it out, but the A could just as easily lead up to the Bb and give us a C7. Or, in our second example here, the Eb could lead down to D, the Gb and A could collapse on G again and the C note could lead down to B, which would give us a G chord. We could also, as I hope you see, create G7, Gm or Gm7 just as easily.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! If you’re up for it, and I have to admit that this is a lot easier on a keyboard than on the guitar, try resolving from Cdim7 to any or all of the following chords: Db, Db7, Dbm, Dbm7, Eb, Eb7, E, Em, Gb, Gb7, A, A7, Bb, Bb7, Bbm, Bbm7 and B7. Even if you decide to take my word for it, just reading that list of possible resolutions should put you a little in awe of the possibilities of this chord. But wait, as they say, there’s more!!

More Fun With Numbers

Ask any of my friends and they will gladly tell you that my grasp of science and/or physics is, at best, more than slightly tenuous. Still, I will declare forever and a day that all the wonderful talk about wormholes and dimensional portals and all that sort of fanciful thought probably started with a musician who was under the spell of Augmented Diminished Dementia.

Remember I told you to hand on to the number twelve? Let’s take a look at something incredibly interesting. Let’s take the twelve tones of Example #3 and the Caug chord of Example #4. Remembering that the Caug chord is built with a root (C), a major third (E) and then another major third (G#), what happens if we add yet another major third to the equation?

Goodness, we’re back at the root! How on earth did that happen? We’ll grab a pencil and come join in the fun. The interval of the major third is two whole steps, or four half steps. So if we’re starting with note “1,” then the next note in our sequence will be “1″ plus 4, which is “5″ and we look on our master chart and low and behold, “5″ is E. So far, so good! Adding four to “5″ gives us “9″ and wouldn’t you know it? G# is the note assigned to “9.” That’s our Caug chord, alright! So let’s add four to “9″ and we’re up to “13,” which, being a half-step up from B puts us smack dab on the C note.

Remember again, our total number of chromatic notes is twelve. “13″ is the same as “1″ as far as we’re concerned here. And twelve, as I truly, sincerely (dare I say desperately?) hope you all know, is divisible evenly by four. Repeat with me from your childhood: “Twelve divided by four is three.” This means that each augmented chord is actually the same as two other augmented chords! They share the same notes! Again, don’t take my word for it! Do the math and see:

And do you know what that means? There are only four possible augmented chord combinations! Oh, each one has got three names (or more if you start changing your flats for sharps – for instance, G#aug, from this example, is the same as Abaug, no?), but I think you see where I’m coming from:

Now go back to our twelve chromatic tone chart in Example #3 (or Example #14, since it’s closer!) and see if we’ve left anyone out. Pretty wild, huh? I’m more than willing to bet that those of you who learned how to play, oh, Gaug, for instance, didn’t have a clue that you also learned how to play Ebaug as well.

And knowing this sort of thing can be gold to a songwriter. You’re writing a song in the key of C and you want to really go wild on the bridge. Instead of using the time-honored C7 to F approach, why not go to Caug? And then instead of going to F, think of Caug as Eaug and go to A without batting an eye. Your listeners will blink and wonder how you managed to transport them without their knowing!

If this isn’t wild enough for you, then let’s go back to the diminished seventh chord. Think about this – the diminished seventh, as we saw earlier is built upon a stack of minor thirds. So guess what happens when you throw another minor third on the pile?

Yup, we’re back at the root again! The interval of a minor third is equal to three half steps, and twelve divided by three is four. So depending on what note you choose as your root, you actually have FOUR different diminished seventh chords here at your disposal:

And now you’re probably jumping ahead of the game and you’ve already guessed the next big secret of life: There are only three different diminished seventh chords! We’ll use flats instead of sharps this time but be sure to check and see if I’ve missed any, will you?

So, knowing this, how easy is it to figure out your moveable diminished seventh chords? Pretty easy, I suspect. Just find one note of the diminished seventh chord on any of the first four strings and use this pattern:

As you can see, this repeats itself every third fret up the neck. Not a bad thing to know!

Remember when I gave you a list of possible resolutions for the Cdim7? Well, that was a pretty good clue for what you were getting yourself into, no? And again, for a songwriter, this is like having a passkey (no pun intended) to get free access from one key to the next with a minimum of trouble. C to Db? They said it couldn’t be done! “Ha!” I say. Just use the Cdim7 chord and you’ll be there long before anyone knows you’re gone!

This, sincerely, is one crazy subject that tends to confuse the daylights out of people. So please take the time to read it all over as many times as you need to. I hate telling people this, but it is all numbers and nothing more. Okay, it is more – it’s also a lot of fun! A warning, though… Augmented diminished dementia is fairly contagious. Please do try not to overdo!

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

When you look at the beginning of a song, there is usually a series of sharps or flats on the staff. If you ever looked at it carefully you would know that they are laid out in a very specific order. So first I will give you the order of sharps.

F, C, G, D, A, E, B.

The order of flats are:

B, E, A, D, G, C, F.

Now the way to remember the order of sharps is Fat, Charlie, Gets, Drunk, After, Every, Beer.

The order of flats obviously spells the word BEAD and then you have GCF after bead. I find if you say the word BEAD and then GCF the GCF kinda sounds like a hairball caught in your throat or something, damn hairballs. You wont forget the order of flats now.

So what you can do is draw a circle with c on top and go around it on the right side with the sharps (which is the circle of fifths), and the left side with the flats, (cycle of fourths. Now C obviously has no sharps or flats, so you need to number them starting with G as one. On the flats F would be one.

Now when you look at a piece of music and you see a series of sharps or flats, count them and you will know what key you are in. To know what sharps or flats they are simply follow the order of sharp or flats and you will have your answer:) So in the key of A there are three sharps. They are F#, C#, G#. So you could write out C Aeolian and replace the f, c, and g, with sharps. This is important when you are writing a particular piece. You can create chords with each key very easily. Lets look at G major. Here is how you can do it.

So all I have done is follow the formula for the major scale w, w, h, w, w, w, h.

Follow the formula for the harmonized major scale Maj, Min, Min, Maj, Dom, Min, Dim.

And I plugged in the modes with the note placement. It is really that simple.

If you need to contact me my email address is jimmy@americanguitarinstititue.com. And if you live in The Memphis area and you need the best instruction money can buy please sign up for lessons before all my slots are filled. Thank you and enjoy the column and my others.

This is what music consists of:

“1% magic
99% stuff that is
explainable;
analyzable;
categorizeable;
doable”

So I thought that, from popular request, I would cover usable theory in this column. Like I said, intervals are the distance between two notes. So you can pick any note to start and that will be your root note. These are the intervals in chromatic order. At first, only read the left two columns, ignore everything in the right columns for the moment.

Now when you have intervals like nine and thirteen what you are doing is going up an octave, but keep counting. SO a root is 8, a 2nd is a 9th, a fourth is an 11th, and a 6th is a 13th. You will only see 9, 11, and 13 as the other intervals are already there because they are required to be there to make a 7th chord. The intervals in parenthesis are optional as guitar only has six strings so sometimes you have to omit tones.By using intervals you can build any chord or scale anywhere on the neck, in any key. So if you want a major scale you would have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The way you build chords is by taking the 1, 3, 5, & 7 out of the scale you are using. Here is a chart on different chords and scales built by intervals. This chart only touches on the tip of the iceberg there are much more thorough lists out there, these are a few chords and scales. The Guitar Grimoire series has a fairly thorough list as well. Sometimes you may see a different spelling for the same note, such as a minor sixth is the same as an augmented fifth, see augment means to sharp, or go forward. Something like in a Diminished 7 chord you will need a double flated 7 written as bb7 so if you take a minor seven and subtract one you have a major six, but in order to call it a seven chord we have to fit it into a bb7.

Below is an Interval chart showing you all the intervals on the neck rooted off of F:

If you notice the one is a different color. It is different so you could easily find the root. So if we want to build say a Major triad rooted off the fifth string you can play 1st fret on the 6th string, then play the 5th fret on the 6th string so you have your 1 and your 3, now we need a five, it is on the 3rd fret 5th string, then your octave is on the 3rd fret 4th string, now we play the third which is on the 2nd fret third string, then the 5 which is on the 1st fret 2nd string then the root 1st fret 1st string and finally our third on the 5th fret 1st string.

Now the great thing about intervals is there are so many ways you can voice any chord or scale on the neck, the main thing is to memorize the formula and be creative building it. Obviously we don’t always play rooted off of F. Suppose we want to build a major scale off of G, it is simple we take our root on F and we move it up 2 frets to G so we can create a new map rooted off of g, the formulas stay the same you just move the root. Here is a chart rooted off of G:

So to build a G major scale we need a 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and octave we can say on the 6th string play the 3rd 5th and 7th frets, then on the 5th string play 3rd, 5th and 7th frets, then on the 4th string we shift to 4th, 5th, and 7th fret, 3rd string we play the same thing 4th, 5th, and 7ty fret, then on the 2nd fret I useually shift up to the 5th fret and play 5th, 7th and 8th frets, same on the first string 5th,7th, then 8th. So we have built a major triad in F, and a Major scale in G.

Good luck with your new found skill on building chords and scales, practice playing these chords and scales in as many different places as possible, the important thing is to look at the fretboard as a giant map. The first note you play does not have to be the root either, you can start on the third or any note you want. Use visualization to visualize where youre intervals are. Thank you Krystel for making these wonderful charts, I would have no hope with computer graphics, I was going to write it out and scan it.

You must first understand the Major Scale. In example #1, I have written out two octaves of the C major scale and given number degrees for each note (1-15). I’m using the C major scale because there are no sharps or flats in this scale. A major scale consists of a combination of Whole (W) and Half (H) steps. That combination is WWHWWWH. When we start with a C note on your instrument, there will be all natural notes when you play this scale. The system is designed this way. But when you start with any other note, you will need to sharpen or flatten at least one or more notes to create the WWHWWWH combination. I am going to refer to the C major scale throughout this lesson in order to keep it as simple as possible. Let’s get started!

There are 3 types of chords that you can relate all your chords to:

1. Major Chords (bright – pretty sounding)
2. Minor Chords (dark – serious sounding)
3. Dominant Chords (chords with a bite! – bebop guys love this stuff)

There are countless combinations and inversions. If you can understand how they are put together and how they function, you can make chord melodies a whole lot easier.

A chord symbol will describe which notes are being played together out of our scale. There can also be numbers, sharps and flats to indicate if there are any modifications needed to be made.

Our 3 types of chords are as follows:

C major = 1 3 5 = C E G
C minor = 1 b3 5 = C Eb G
C dominant = 1 3 5 b7 = C E G Bb

Here is a little chart with extensions to the chords that I make for my students:

Major Chords: 1 – 3 – 5 – (6) – 7 – 9 – (#11) – 13
Minor Chords: 1 – b3 – 5 (b5) – (6) – b7 – 9 – 11
Dominant Chords: 1 – 3 – (b5) 5 (#5) – b7 – (b9) 9 (#9) -(#11) – (b13) 13
Diminished Chords: 1 – b3 – b5 – bb7 (double flat (bb) = whole step lower)
Suspended Chords: 1 – (2) or (4) – 5 – b7

You can do a lot with only these to work with! A chord symbol will tell you what is in the chord itself. So let’s do a few to see if you have gotten this far.

Major Chords
C (C E G)
C6 (C E G A)
Cmaj7 (C E G B)
Cmaj9 (C E G B D)
Cmaj7#11 (C E G B F#)
Cmaj13#11 ( C E B D F# A)

Minor Chords
Cm ( C Eb G)
Cm7 (C Eb G Bb)
Cm9 (C Eb G Bb D)
Cm11 (C Eb G Bb D F)
Cm6 (C Eb G A)

Dominant Chords
C7 (C E G Bb)
C9 (C E G Bb D)
C13 (C E G Bb D A)
C7b9 (C E G Bb Db)
C7b9b13 (C E G Bb Db Ab)
C7#5 (C E G# Bb)
C7b5 (C E Gb Bb)
C7b9#11b13 (C E G Bb Db F# Ab)
Cdim7 (C Eb Gb Bbb)

Suspended Chords
Csus2 (C D G)
C7sus4 (C F G Bb)

If you use the C major scale with the degrees marked and the chord formulas I presented to you, you should get a good general idea of how C chords are built. You can do the exact same with the other eleven notes of the chromatic scale! The diminished scale has a dominant characteristic, but really sticks out. Therefore it is grouped with the dominant chords, but I separated it in the formulas. The suspended chord belongs to “no one.” The 3rd and the 7th degree are the most important notes to give color (its tonal characteristic) to a chord. When the 3rd degree is removed, it has a floating type of tone. It is not until the other chords in a song or the melody can give away its nature of major, minor or dominant.

Look at the chord symbols and how they describe which degrees in the scale make up the chord. There are other combinations you can come up with. Knowing this system, you can manipulate the chord symbol to describe what notes you want in a chord.

The only other feature I want to talk about is changing the bass note. Just make you chord symbol and use a slash (/) then the bass note.

Example: Cm7/G (this is a Cm7 with a G in the Bass). It’s that simple to write.

That is pretty much it for now. You need to practice it for sure. If you take the time, you will find it easy. Have fun!

There are chords which are enharmonic to each other (chords that share the same notes but have different functions and therefore different names). We will deal with that another time. There are also chord substitutions….they are easy ways to extend the colors of the original chord…. I’ll talk to you about them another time as well.

Tip: When I assemble a chord melody, I want to stay true to a chord, but I will eliminate notes if I need to. “Which notes?” you might ask. Well, it depends on how difficult it is to make it sound good. At that point… I don’t care as long as it sounds good. So bend or break the rules if you need to. The big question is “Does it sound good?” Well, that’s all I’m looking for. I’ll leave the number crunching to the analysts…. ha!

Sooooooo……. are you ready for that aspirin yet? Take some time with this and check out the actual notes with the chords you already play! It always works. When I do that with my students, they always trip out.

Enjoy!

“Sometimes it’s kind of cool to know what you’re playing.”

Also in this Series

• The Art of Creating Complete Song Arrangements
• I Got Rhythm
• It’s Only A Paper Moon

If you think so, then that’s how we’ll start our exploration of chords: with a tune. Actually, a chunk from a tune. Let’s check it out.

Strum each of these chords twice, anywhere on the fretboard.

C, Am, F, G7, C

Now, let’s work backwards to understand just how this musical phrase works, in terms of the chords that we find in it.

G7 to C

Look at the last chord change: G7 to C. Why do we play this? Why not play an Eb7b9 or an F#13b5? Or even something simple like an F major? What’s so great about a G7? Well, play those other chords with C, and listen to what your ear says about each. That will give you the best answer.

The most satisfying chord to play before the C is the G7. What the heck does that mean: “satisfying?” It partially means what we expect to hear, what we are accustomed to hearing, and what we’ve heard in a billion other phrases and tunes.

So, what is it about the G7 that makes playing it before C so satisfying? A few things. Let’s talk about ‘em:

• The sweet note of the G7: B
• The no-no interval, or tritone
• The movement of a perfect 4th up from G to C

Let’s look at each of these under our musical magnifying glass.

The sweet note

The sweet note of a chord is its third: In G7, that’s a B. Play a G7 without a B and you’ll see why B is sweet.

The G7 sounds pretty drab without that B, doesn’t it? It’s like putting up a Christmas tree but not decorating it. Let’s put that B back in before things get out of hand.

The B is what gives the G7 its peppy, optimistic sound. And there’s another reason why B is important in helping G7 to C sound satisfying.

B is just a wee little bitty bit shy, one half-step shy to be exact, from C. This closeness of B to C causes tension. It’s like that box of chocolate Pop Tarts way up on the top shelf that the little kid can almost but not quite reach. We like to have this tension and resolution combo, and the B helps provide it.

Understanding the role the sweet note plays can improve your entire sound. Learn more about the third and the other ingredients that go into chords by reading Guitar Chords. Check it out here:

The no-no interval, or tritone

There’s another reason why the G7 moves so satisfyingly to the C. It’s called the tritone interval. This interval will make your straight hair curly, your milk go sour, and will propel the G7 smack into the C with cataclysmic force. (That last sentence sounds great if you pretend you’re Charlton Heston.)

The tritone is an interval, which means it’s two notes: B and F. Play a B and an F, listening to how unusual they sound together and how much tension they produce. In fact, play this tab:

Tritone to minor 6th

Here’s the sound file for this tab: [aac1.mid]

This movement of the unstable tritone to the stable minor 6th (the C and E notes) is another reason why G7 to C sounds good.

By the way, there’s an interesting newsgroup message that relates some of the beliefs that Ancient Greeks and others had about the tritone. To read this message, surf to this subdomain: groups.google.com. When you’re there, click Advanced Groups Search. Then, enter this text in the box that reads “Message ID”: cornell.791886334@michigan

Up a fourth

What’s another reason why G7 to C will put a smile in your step and a twang in your Tang? What’s the root of the G7? The G. What’s the root of the C chord? The C. What’s the interval between these two roots, G and C? A perfect fourth. Chord movement by an ascending perfect fourth generally sounds good.

We can even take that a bit further by saying that a huge number of chord movements in most types of songs use ascending perfect fourths (or a descending perfect 5th).

Listen to some examples of this interval: play a D note followed by a G note. Just play notes now, not chords. Then, play a G followed by a C note, and an A followed by a D. Now, let’s flesh this idea out by playing a chord progression that moves only in fourths. Play this:

C, F, B dim, Em, Am, Dm, G7, C

Notice I said “fourths” and not perfect fourths. Almost all of the movements here are ascending perfect fourths. One movement, from F to B, is not a perfect fourth, but our furry friend the tritone.

How does this progression in all fourths sound to you? It provides tension from the B dim and G7, you have a mix of all the chord types in the major scale: minor, diminished, major, and you’re moving by one of your ear’s favorite intervals: the ascending perfect fourth. All is well with the universe. Go in peace.

What can you do with it?

What can we use this all fourths progression for? For one thing, use it to write tunes. Let’s say you’ve come up with a melody and you don’t know what chords to put to it. No problem. Assuming the melody is in C major, sing the melody while strumming the all fourths progression given a little while ago. Play it slowly; listen carefully; feel the Force…whoa, sorry. Wrong movie.

Chances are, your melody will sound pretty good over those chords for at least some of the notes. Wherever it doesn’t sound so good, either change the melody, or swap out the chord.

How to practice

The V7-I progression is pretty important, so you want to practice it in as many keys as you can manage. The progression we did in this section is in C. Let’s transpose the progression to other common keys.

Keep in mind that you can play the following chords anywhere on the fretboard – at least at first. Don’t worry about playing a particular voicing, playing all over the neck, or playing on just a certain string or strings. Just play the form of the chord you feel most comfy with.

Let’s do V7-I in these keys: F, G, A, E, D and for extra credit, Gb.

Here are the chords:

Key F: C7, F
Key G: D7, G
Key A: E7, A
Key E: B7, E
Key D: A7, D
Key Gb: Db7, Gb

Now, that shows what to practice. But, how do you practice ‘em? That breaks down into where to practice ‘em, then how often, and other questions.

First, as said a short while ago, play the above progressions in each key wherever you feel most comfortable playing them. This would likely mean open position chords if you’re a beginner.

Practice the V7-I progressions until you can play them in time with a metronome. Start with 90 BPM, and play a phrase like this:

| V7 V7 | I I | V7 V7 | I I |

In other words, strum the V7 twice, then the one twice, and repeat that sequence. Then, go on to the next key. This might be more fun if you had a playalong partner to do it with. So, here’s a Powertab file you can use for that:

http://www278.pair.com/dkoltow/FiveOne5keys.ptb

This file has all the V7-I progressions in the list above. Load them into Power Tab and play along with them. If the tempo is too fast, change the tempo marker, which you can do under the Music Symbols menu.

If you haven’t downloaded the super cool and free Powertab yet, here’s where to get it:

http://power-tab.net

Once you get good at playing these progressions, you’ll want to keep playing while you switch keys. In other words, if you’re strumming along to G7 and C, you’d want to have a buddy or a computer program call out the next key at random. “Key A!” “Key E!” and so on. It’s your job and your joy to play through without missing a beat.

Read the next installment of All About Chords at MaximumMusician.com. We’ll look at why chords are built in thirds, the progression every guitarist must know, how to practice it, and the many uses of regurgitated cat hairballs.

A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, G#, A

When A is your root note, Eb (or D#) is your diminished fifth (or augmented fourth). It is the sixth half step from either end of the scale. This is often referred to as a tritone, because it is the third full step from the root and it takes an additional three full steps to get back to the root. It is very common in jazz and classical music but very rare in most other guitar music. It is very key in what is known as the “whole tone” scale, that is, a scale that has no half steps in it whatsoever. Here it is in A:

A, B, C#, Eb, F, G, A

A diminished chord, as I’m sure you’re aware, consists of the root, the minor (or diminished) third AND the diminished fifth. If you will, it is a minor third on top of another minor third. Since the guitar, when standardly tuned, is tuned in fourths, it is almost impossible to play pure diminished chords in a movable style. What is usually used instead is a diminished seventh, which is a bizarre chord in and of itself but truly wonderful to work with.

This is four minor thirds on top of each other. It’s played on the first four strings and, in first position, it looks like this:

Ddim7:

E – 1st fret
B – open
G – 1st fret
D – open
A – don’t play
E – don’t play

Now the fun thing about this is that because of the intervals, you can play this same chord up and down the fret board. Think about it, the notes involved in this chord are D, F, Ab, and B (which is Cb, hence the “diminished” seventh). Look where else I can play these same notes:

Ddim7 (variation 1):

E – 4th fret
B – 3rd fret
G – 4 th fret
D – 3rd fret
A – don’t play
E – don’t play

Ddim7 (variation 2):

E – 7th fret
B – 6th fret
G – 7th fret
D – 6th fret
A – don’t play
E – don’t play

Ddim7 (variation 1):

E – 10th fret
B – 9th fret
G – 10th fret
D – 9th fret
A – don’t play
E – don’t play

And if this isn’t wild enough, think about this – depending on what note you choose as your root, you actually have FOUR different diminished seventh chords here at your disposal:

This is one crazy subject that tends to confuse the daylights out of people. I hope to write about it sometime this winter when I have enough free time to ensure that I write it well enough for people to understand the first time!

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to diminished chords and select edit to make improvements.

Unfortunately this isn’t one of them, but it was a good question,

“…I know an octave is twice the pitch of one note, for instance A is 440hz and the octave is 880hz, right? Then I was told it is “8 notes above the first” what does 8 notes above the first mean?”

Generally discussions regarding the technical frequency value of a note verses the scale name is kept under lock and key for fear of sending musicians off to the loony bin.

Let’s start with the second half of the question.

Get yourself a strong cup of coffee, we are going to discuss the fretboard.

But first, just to add to the confusion, I’m going to talk about the piano.

The piano has 88 keys. If you divide 88 by the number of notes in an octave you get…?

7 1/3 octaves

How many people came up with 11?

Well that’s because an “Oct”-ave doesn’t have 8 notes, it has 12.

This confusion is easily dealt with if you just think of the Latin root of “Octave”: “Oct” from the Latin for “Eight”. “Ave” which in Latin means “add a random number here”

I suppose you really want to know how we get 12 notes to the octave?

Take a look again at the piano. From C to C there are 12 keys each a half step apart.

“Hold on there” you say “Are you insane? There isn’t a half step from E to F and B to C, is there?”

Ahh, grasshopper the answers to your questions are “Yes I am, but I am not dysfunctional.” And “Oh yes there is.”

All of the above mentioned keys suffer from the musical version of bi-polar disorder. E# is F, Fb is E and the same goes for B and C.

Don’t ask me why. There is an advanced mathematical formula that explains why, but involves hallucinogens, moon phases and animal sacrifice. I research this every Friday at my house.

Let’s look at the fretboard.

The guitar has 6 strings and if you divide that by twelve you get .72 octaves. Which is completely wrong, but helps to explain my limited playing ability.

But seriously for just a moment, the guitar does have 6 strings, (don’t start with me, we are sticking to six), and on average the neck has 22 frets. But no you may not multiply 6 times 22 and divide by 12.

Consider tuning your guitar:

5th fret of E is the same as A
5th fret of A is the same as D
5th fret of D is the same as G
4th fret of G is the same as B
5th fret of B is the same as E

If you think about this, any note above the fret that you are tuning the next higher string to, is repeated on that higher string. In other words, the sixth fret of the E string is A#, the same note as the first fret of the A string.

Now let’s figure out the octaves.

We are going to count only the half steps/frets on each string that are not duplicated on the next higher string. (Anyone who has read David’s beginning theory articles knows that each fret is a half step. If you haven’t read them, stop reading this nonsense and go do it now.)

Here we go:
5 on E
5 on A
5 on D
4 on G
5 on B

and how many frets on the neck? That’s right – 22.

22 on E – (there is no higher string so they all count)

46 so far

I’m going to add two to the total for bending the 22nd fret of the high E string, which is a D, up to E. (Ever wonder why some guitars have that funky extra bit of fretboard extending over the soundhole? Mystery solved.)

For a grand total of, drum roll please: 48 half steps

Now you have my permission to divide that total by 12 half steps in an octave.

Did we all get four octaves?

But to answer “What does 8 notes above the first mean?” is uhh… well, from a guitar point of view the octave note is 12 half steps above the root note.

If you want to get technical, the 12 half steps are also 8 “diatonic” notes, where diatonic is a low calorie mixer. We will come back to diatonic in the section about that party animal Pythagoras.

Just for fun consider this. Here are the locations of all of the E notes on the fretboard.

So if you are ever soloing and you want to start with E, just pull out this sheet and pick an E, any E.

“But Nick” you say, “You didn’t answer the question. 8 notes or 12, what does that mean and who picked 12 notes anyway?”

Stick with me here as we skip back to the first question.

Yes, “A” just happens to be 440Hz. That is the frequency of the sound waves hitting your ear from the source. The measure of wave peak to wave peak as they pass a given point. This doesn’t mean diddly to me really unless I’m tuning the orchestra or my guitar.

Frequency didn’t mean diddly to Bach either, his Well Tempered Clavier was a clever play on words about tuning to an exact ratio of tones divided within each octave, verses tuning to a tempered pitch to reduce overtones, and the fact that he was usually so drunk he was constantly hitting his shins on the furniture.

But before we get to Bach, let’s have a little Physics and Math lesson, shall we?

Wow, even my eyes are beginning to glaze over.

What the heck does that mean, tempered pitch verses exact ratio?

(Warning, do not read the following after 3.00 PM as it will cause your head to immediately plummet to your desk.)

Let us consider the note A, which is 440Hz.

The frequency of any component of a harmonic series can be figured using:

f(N) = N * fo

where:
N is the harmonic number
fo is the frequency of the fundamental.

We are looking for the second harmonic, which is also known as the Octave.

Hold on to your seats, here we go now,

fo = 440Hz
N = 2

So the second harmonic/octave is 880Hz.

Let’s look at the above in a different context.

Sound waves… who remembers the scene in Jurassic park where the scientist looks into the puddle and sees the ripples? The Tyrannosaurus was on his way. Time to go.

The ripples were caused by the sound wave created by the dinosaur’s footstep. They traveled through the ground and created the ripples in the puddle.

So let’s consider the T-Rex our root note frequency. Wherever he is stepping he is going to cause the ripples to move through the water at the same speed.

If you used the T-Rex ripple frequency as a base, you could figure out any other kind of dinosaur’s approach by comparing the ripples.

Now if instead of the T-Rex, it had been the dreaded “Octave-asaurus”, the ripples would move exactly twice as fast. Doubling the frequency of ripples in other words.

The “Fifth-asaurus” would send out 3 ripples in the same time as 2 T-Rex ripples.

The “Fourth-asaurus” would create 4 ripples in the same time it took for 3 T-Rex ripples.

Remember Mr. “Square of the Hypoteneuse” Pythagoras? He discovered the ratio for these harmonics, amongst other things, a couple of thousand years before Spielberg was born.

Octave = 2/1
Fifth = 3/2
Fourth =4/3

Pythagoras, who was a mathematician, came up with all of the combinations of these ratios to get numeric values for the scale.

For example:

A perfect fifth (3/2) plus a perfect fourth (4/3)
= 3*4 = 12/6 or 2/1= an octave
2*3

If you look at all the combinations of these ratios, you get the aforementioned and dreaded Pythagorean diatonic scale. In the line below big “C” is the root note and little “c” is the octave.

C=1; D=9/8; E=81/64; F= 4/3; G=3/2; A=27/16; B=243/128; c=2/1.

This is an exact ratio scale.

Pythagoras thought “Wow, harmony in music, math as harmony” until some wise guy came along and told him this system had problems. For instance, twelve pure fifths is not the same as seven octaves, but it should be.

This is called the “The cycle of Fifths” problem – not to be confused with recycling fifths, or moonshining.

Here is the “The cycle of Fifths” problem in a nutshell:

7 octaves = (2/1)^ 7 = 128
12 fifths = (3/2)^ 12 = 129.74

Let’s just walk through that in a slightly different way:

You take a note, we’ll call it the “root” and play the note a fifth above it. Now take the note you just arrived at and do the same. Repeat this a total of 12 times.

Where do you end up? Interestingly, (or not as the case may be), you end up at a note amazingly similar to your root note, 7 octaves higher.

(As an aside, and this one may take a second or two to understand, but if you flatten this series of fifths into a single octave, you get a 12-step scale. Haven’t we seen that before?)

But wait, there’s more.

If you take that note from above, the one that is 12 fifths from the root, and compare it to the original root note, taken up 7 octaves higher, well they should be exactly the same frequency, right?

Wrong.

The cycle of fifths note has a frequency of 3568.02 Hz. The octave-based note has a frequency of 3520 Hz

The difference comes from the fifth being off by .02 cents compared to the octave. Multiply this by 12 and you get an error of 24 cents or roughly a quarter semi-tone or about 48.02 Hz.

To get around this dilemma, you flatten the pitch of the fifth by 2 cents. That is a Tempered Fifth.

Why is that important?

It’s all about frequency. When you tune your guitar using harmonics and the two strings are slightly out of tune, you can hear the notes “wobble”. As you tune closer, the “wobble” decreases. As you tune further apart the “wobble” increases. Non-tempered scales do this all over the place. Say you need to play four notes simultaneously; the root, the third, the fifth and the octave. Well the root and the octave would be fine, but the third would be 14 cents flat and the fifth would be 2 cents sharp. People would run from you like you were dragging your nails down the chalkboard.

This is the reason some people argue against tuning using harmonics.

So back to Bach, his shins and his furniture…

Bach was well known around Vienna, (motto: “Sei gesegnet ohne Ende, Heimaterde, wunderhold!, translation – Birthplace of little sausages, in tins!) as a confused and drunken musician. Bach mistakenly called his shin the “Clavicle” and became an angry, belligerent drunk if you corrected him. So Bach became known as “Mr. Ill Tempered Clavicle”, Hence the play on words with Well Tempered Clavier.

Apparently at the time, there was a big debate about the use of exact ratio or tempered scale. Bach, in a moment of lucidity, wrote a prelude and fugue for each of the 12 major and minor keys – using his tempered scale. He had other tempered scales he used where 7 of the 12 fifths were tempered more and 5 were tempered less. Where the third was tempered such and such here but not there. Anyway, the first one is what we are stuck with today.

To tell the truth, Bach was only concerned with frequency as it related to the number of times he would have to urinate.

True story.

Back to reality…

Oct-ave, oct-agon, oct-upuss;

We have already seen the Latin root of the word, but Olde English is slightly different.

“oct” means 8, “ave” is old English for “it sounds like the same note but relatively higher, just please, dear God, don’t make me explain it in terms of frequency”

As you can see in the old English, music theory lessons could take a long time until they coined the word “octave”

Anyway, look at a piano or a sheet of music.

The notes go EFGABCDEFGABCDE starting at the bottom of the staff in treble clef extending up above the staff in this case. This is the singing range of the Castrati.

By the way, just in case you thought musicians were mentally stable, do a look up on the singing requirements for Castrati. I keep trying to start a Castrati choir at church, but very few ever show up for the first meeting. The ones that do are usually ex-wives whose husbands ran off with their 26 year old secretaries. They don’t want to sing, they just want to “help”.

I digress. Look back at the notes:

8 notes from E is E, 8 from G is G, 8 from A is A

Keep in mind you can have scales that have more or fewer notes, and often did way back when, so the number of notes to double the frequency was frequently not 8. You can argue with me here, but I will plug my ears and sing nah-nah-nah, alternating octaves without regard to frequency, just so I can’t hear you.

So the answer to the original question is:

1. Yes the octave is twice the frequency of the root note.
2. In our particular version of notation, the octave is also 8 diatonic notes above the original.

Here’s a couple of other scales to consider:

Pentatonic

Penta as in Pentagon, means five
Tonic again means a decent low calorie mixer for the copious amounts of alcohol needed to understand beginning music theory.

Advanced musical theorists no longer need tonic as they drink straight from the brown paper bag.

For the hard core musicians, (read this as Jazz), their theory helper is now measured in grams and it becomes the “pentagram” scale. When you understand this it makes it easier to understand Jazz chords.

anyway here are a major and minor movable pentatonic scale:

Based on a 5 note scale, the numbers on the frets represent the value of the note in the pentatonic scale. Some of these are octaves of each other, see above. If you notice, the fingers are moving in the same pattern, but the root has changed to protect the innocent.

You can move these up and down the fret board changing key willy-nilly,(a Grammy winning lip syncing duo, I have no idea what they have to do with this), and the root note becomes your new key.

Classical musicians the same applies to you, just move the guitar to the other leg.

Hope this clarifies it all.

Nick

P.S. Has anyone seen my brown paper bag? Call me if you find it.

I wanted something Bluesey. I wanted to play music and not a monotonous, “mah-ching up and down the fretboard” (Say with a John Cleese accent) lesson as boring as cardboard. I couldn’t find a lesson like this, so I wrote one.

What specifically is it?

Blues Triad Mastery is two examples of ii-V-I based chord progressions that illustrate each inversion of three of the four fundamental triad types, using a melody soaked in the Blues. Here’s a summary of the features of BTM:

• Blues-based melody
• Musical context: Two-five-one progressions
• Triads in all inversions
• Frets from 0 to 12, strings high E through D covered
• Two types of 251 progressions: target tone and scale-style
• Major, minor, diminished triads covered

How does it help me?

Here are some specific benefits that BTM provides:

• Builds facility with triads in all inversions.
• Shows you how to make triad practice engaging with the Blues.
• Provides the basis for understanding more complex chords.
• Grows your ears by conditioning you to the major, minor, and diminished triads.
• Enhances skill in playing the essential ii-V7-I progression.

Who’s it for?

Blues Triad Mastery is intended to help beginning to intermediate level guitarists. But, even advanced guitarists might enjoy and benefit from BTM.

Here are the two progressions. The by-string approach is first.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

F major, ascending and descending, string 1

Here’s a progression using the focus note or target note approach.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

F String 1, focus note A

Discussion: The Blues Triad Mastery Approach

The progressions in Blues Triad Mastery are approached in two ways, so you’ll be less likely to get stuck knowing just one way to play them. Even so, after you master these progressions, you’ll want to write your own triad exercises using new approaches for greater flexibility.

First, we move along the high E string, playing each inversion of the major triad, ascending and descending. Next, we flow melodically, in the same musical phrase, from the major triad to the minor one.

We do the same with the minor triad as we did with the major: playing each inversion, ascending and descending the string. After the minor, we flow into the diminished triad. Last, we flow from the diminished back into the major triad.

Note that we’re covering only one string here. You’d want to maximize your triad skills by transposing the by-string approach to strings B, G, and D. See the checklist later in this article for a summary of all the triad progressions you’ll want to create and practice.

The second way we approach triad skill building is as follows:

We focus on a particular note, which I call a target note; play a major triad with that target note in the top voice of the chord; flow into the minor chord, whose top note will be as close to the major chord’s target note as possible; flow from the minor into the diminished, again staying close to the target note; last, flow back into the major chord, into its target note.

Note that we’re only using focus note A here. You’d want to transpose the focus note progression given here to make progressions for each note in the F major triad: F, A, and C.

Why the Blues? Why ii-V-I?

In both approaches, a ii-V-I progression is used, and so is the Blues. Why a ii-V-I? It occurs in so many pieces of music, you might almost think you were hearing noise if you heard a tune without a ii-V-I progression in it.

In other words, it’s so common that you have to know it to achieve mastery of music. The ii-V-I is kind of like the eggs in a cake. You *could* make the cake without the eggs, but I’m not coming to your house to eat it.

Note that the actual progression used is not a ii-V-I, but is related to ii-V-I. We’re using a ii-vii-I in these progressions. The V has been swapped out for the vii because the V is a major triad; we already have a major triad in the progression, via the I chord.

We’d rather work another triad type, such as the diminished, to avoid using only two of the four triad types. With the ii-vii-I, we still get a ii-V7-I feeling, and we get three of the four triad types.

You need one more triad type…

So, where’s the fourth triad type? *What* is the fourth triad type? It’s the augmented triad, which does not occur naturally in the major scale, though it does occur in the Melodic Minor scale. I wanted to emphasize the major scale here because of its relatively greater popularity in Western music.

Also, learning the augmented chord is a piece of cake once you’ve learned the other triad shapes. Play the A augmented triad — notes A, C#, and F — through each inversion, with the top note on the high E string, and you’ll see what I mean. Who says playing guitar is hard?

Why the Blues?

Why inject the Blues into Blues Triad Mastery? This one is tough to answer because it seems so natural to include the Blues in any kind of practice routine. Going back to the food analogy, the Blues is the butter in “bread and butter.” Or, maybe it’s the bread. I don’t know.

In either case, any music exercise becomes engaging the moment you add the Blues to it. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the Blues is how you get maximum emotional output of music from minimal physical effort.

Also, knowing where the Blue notes are in *anything* you play is just being practical. Popular music still has a lot of Blues in it. So, if you want to play jazz, rock, bluegrass, or pop, learn as much Blues as you can. More specifically, learn the “Blues potential” of those things you play that don’t yet have the Blues in them: scales, chords, etc.

Discussion: Why triads?

Why bother learning triads? What benefits do you get from learning chords with just three notes, when you could learn bigger, more colorful chords? There are lots of reasons to learn triads.

First, they make learning more complex chords easier. Visualizing a three note shape is easier than a four or five note shape, and visualizing the note *names* in a triad is also easier compared to chords with more than three notes.

And, if you haven’t discovered this yet, you will learn that visualizing the many shapes that music takes on the fretboard is a crucial factor in making music well with the guitar. Learning triads help you achieve this visualization.

Don’t trust just one source to learn the importance of triads. In guru William Leavitt’s vital guitar reference, Modern Guitar Method, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, Leavitt gives triad exercises even in the advanced volumes 2 and 3.

This includes 8 separate exercises just in volume 2. That fact *alone* would make knowing triads seem important to me. On WholeNote.com, another important resource for guitarists, about 200 results come back when you enter “triads” in their search engine.

Triads are also important to know when you’re reading slash chord notation. Once you know triad shapes well, these shapes will come readily to your mind’s eye when you read “Cm/B” or a similar slash chord in sheet music.

To learn more about slash chords, check out this article from the Guitar Noise archives: Slash Chords. Also, check out the Slash and Burn article on MaximumMusician.com.

For more triad chops:

Use the following checklists to show you which other strings and focus notes you’ll want to create your own Blues triad progressions for. You can create your own progressions by transposing the two in this lesson.

Here’s a checklist summary for all the triad progressions you’ll want to learn using the by-string approach.

• F Major
  • String E
  • String B
  • String G
  • String D

Here’s the checklist for all the triad progressions you’ll want to play using the target note approach:

• F Major
• E string
  • Note F
  • Note A
  • Note C
• B string
  • Note F
  • Note A
  • Note C
• G string
  • Note F
  • Note A
  • Note C
• D string
  • Note F
  • Note A
  • Note C

Have fun with Blues Triad Mastery. And pick up more free guitar info by subscribing to the tasty Guitar Study newsletter.

Guitar Study shows you where to find the best free guitar stuff on the ‘Net, in your head and other realms. Guitar Study also shows you how to turn your practicing into playing. Sign up at Maximum Musician.

A note on strumming: strum four beats per bar with a pattern that feels natural. Focus on keeping a steady rhythm. You don’t even have to use a pick. Your fingers or thumb can strum.

The “||:” and “:||” symbols tell you to repeat what’s between them. “D.C. al Fine” means to go back to the start and then play until you reach the word “Fine.”

How it Works

Let’s discuss why this song sounds as good as it does. You don’t need to know this to play around with the song. Feel free to skip ahead. You don’t have to read this to simply enjoy playing, but it might help you out. With just a few elementary facts about chords, you can begin writing your own progressions. Let’s talk about these facts.

First, learn some Musical Math. Here are some introductory concepts to it. Chords are built from scales. The chords in the song we’re working with come from the C major scale. Here are all the chords in C major:

*Any “diminished” chord consists of a root, a minor (flatted) third and a flatted fifth. If you want to know more about how chords are formed read the Guitar Noise Column The Power of Three. Since a B diminished has notes B, D, and F, you can see how close it is to a G7 in its overall sound.

Five One

The strongest chord movement, or cadence in Western music is the Five One. In the key of C, that means playing a G7 chord, and then playing a C chord right after it:

Do you hear how strongly that sets up C as the key center or tonic? Right after you strum the G7 (the Five), your ear is just itching to hear the C (the One). Just try playing the G7 and don’t play the C. You’ll feel like there’s something important missing, like you forgot to put your underwear on this morning.

Here are Five Ones in some other keys.

Two Five and Four Five

Here’s another strong chord movement. Play a D min (a Two in C major) followed by a G7 (a Five from C major). This movement doesn’t happen in the song we played, but something like it does: an F (a Four) to G7 (a Five). Let’s play more examples of Four-Fives and Two-Fives in other keys:

Two Five Four Five in A

Two Five Four Five in G

One Six

This chord movement, which shows up in measures 1 and 2 of the Sam Cooke song, is not as strong as the Five One and Two Five movements, but it’s just as important. Let’s play some examples.

One Six

Do you hear how close the Ones and the Sixes are? This is because, in a major scale, Six is the relative minor of One. When you move to the A minor from C, it just doesn’t feel as final or complete as playing a G7 to C. It’s almost like you’re playing two different flavors of the same chord. The music doesn’t have the sense of completion that a V to I change has.

To summarize these rules: for strong chord movements, play Five to One and Two to Five. For not so strong chord movements, play One to Six.

Other Resources

Here are other places on the web where you can learn about chord progressions:

• Guitar Chords lessons at Guitar Noise
• A Before E (Except After C)
• Five To One (or “Home, Home Again)
• You Say You Want A Resolution
• MoneyChords.com
• www.torvund.net/guitar/

This is an excerpt from the ebook Guitar Chords: a Beginner’s Guide

Be that as it may, let’s pick up that thread again. First we started out with transposing (Turning Notes Into Stone) and then the last time out we examined how chord progressions were formed in minor keys (Minor Progress). Today I want to introduce you to the subject of modulation. But first a word:

These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Okay, then. Let’s read a bit from Walter Piston’s Harmony:

Part of our conception of tonality is the notion that a tonal piece is “in” a particular key, implying that the particular key defines just one tonic (root) for the piece. Nevertheless, composers in the common-practice era seem to have agreed that it was aesthetically undesirable for a piece of music to remain in only one key, unless it was quite short. Compositions of any substantial length invariably include tones from outside the underlying diatonic scale and at least one change of key, meaning the adoption of a different tonal center to which all the other tones are related. The process involved in changing from one tonal center to another is called modulation. Modulation represents the dynamic state of tonality. The word implies that there is a key in which a piece of music begins, a different key into which it progresses, and a process of getting there.

Whew! That’s a bit of information, huh? What’s it all mean? Well, put in simplest terms, it means that it used to be considered very boring if a song stayed in the same key. And before you go thinking, “Oh yeah, but that was only in classical music, you know, the big orchestra productions…” please realize that this was true of all sorts of “pop” music as well. If you look through songs from the 1600’s, 1700’s and 1800’s (even the “exercises” for students!) are rife with key changes within a song.

Modulation is a great song writing tool and, more importantly, a key subject to grasp if you want to know more about how music is put together. And, fortunately, there are lots of examples of modulation in recent pop/rock/whatever music as well, which we can use to explore this technique.

But before we go dissecting some songs, let’s do two quick things. First let’s ponder this bit of information, also from Piston’s Harmony:

There are three stages in the process of bringing about a modulation. First of all, a tonality must be already clear to the hearer. Second, the music at some point must change its tonal center. Third, the hearer is made aware of the change and the new tonal center is confirmed.

That wasn’t too difficult to understand, was it? Okay, now I’d also like you to review two columns I wrote last summer called Five To One and You Say You Want A Resolution… because we will be using a lot of things today that come from what we learned back then.

Bumping It Up A Step

The first time that most of us become aware that a song can indeed change key is when we’re hit over the head with it. Nothing subtle, just bang! and “Hey! Something’s changed the music Did they speed up the record or something?”

Moving a song up a half or a whole step can create a jarring, dramatic effect. Think about the Who’s song My Generation. The group is pounding away, there’s this terrific bass solo and just when you think that it can’t get any wilder, they go and move the whole thing up a step for the final verse! No warning or anything! Rick Neilsen does the same thing twice in Cheap Trick’s Surrender.

But an interesting thing to note is that the change of key does not have to last the duration of a song. Citing Pete Townsend once more, let’s look at Won’t Get Fooled Again. The song pretty much establishes itself in the key of A for the first two verses and choruses (stage one if you’re keeping score…) and then without warning it steps up to the key of B for the bridge:

And stays there for the guitar solo before coming back to the key of A again for the rest of the song. And bonus points to those of you who are thinking that the “BAE” progression is just the “AGD” progression transposed up a whole step. That’s why we go over these things! And repeating a progression in the transposed key is a sure fire way to achieve the third stage – letting the listener become aware that there is a new tonal center. Another song that does this is Bruce Springsteen’s I’m A Rocker. In the middle of the songs there is an organ solo and for whatever reason, the song changes keys up a whole step just for the duration of that solo. When the last verse comes ‘round again, everything is back where it was.

Changing keys like this can even be more mysterious when it is done without fanfare. That is, when is is a “normal’ part of the song in stead of a solo or a new section, like a bridge. The choruses of (Nothing But) Flowers by the Talking Heads go right from the key of G to the key of A and then right back again without you even having a moment to catch your breath:

Sometimes, though, songs can be a little sneakier about changing keys. This is often done through the use of what we call a “pivot chord.” Back to the book:

The second stage of the modulation involves the choice of a chord which will serve as a tonal vantage point for both keys. In other words, it will be a chord common to both keys, which we will call the pivot chord…

In (Nothing But) Flowers the D at the end of the chorus (the one with the “***” after it) is our pivot chord. It serves as the IV in the key of A and also as the V in the key of G and gives us a smooth transition back to the original key. It’s much less jarring than the shift up to A in the first place, isn’t it?

A QUICK NOTE: Most of the examples that we have used up to this point have, for all intents and purposes, NOT used pivot chords to make their modulations. Oh yes, we could argue this point until doomsday if you wish, but I just don’t want you thinking that a pivot chord is something you HAVE to have. But, as you will see and hear, it does make for very intriguing possibilities.

Let’s look at this song by Roxy Music:

Here you see that the verse starts out the song in the key of C. It’s your standard I – VI – IV – V progression in fact. From there it shifts from IV to V (F to G) a couple of times. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. But then as the verse comes to a close and the chorus starts up and before you realize it you are back in your I – VI – IV – V progression but the key has changed! How did this happen? Were we sleeping?

The key here is the G chord. While it is the V in the key of C, it is also the IV in the key of D. In the last line of the verse (“you’re dressed to kill…”) the G chord gets a little more dynamic play which sets up the switch from C to D. Hence it is here at this particular moment that it becomes our pivot chord, which I have again designated with the “***” symbol.

Generals And Majors And (Relative) Minors

If you’ve taken the time to read (or reread) last summer’s articles, then you are already familiar with the examples posed by Comfortably Numb as well as One Headlight. Modulations between a major key and its relative minor (or vice versa) are quite common in all kinds of music and can help make a song much more interesting to its listeners. And it’s fairly easy to do since any major and its relative minor share all kinds of chords that can be used as pivots.

But because of something that we learned in our last column, Minor Progress, you can creat even more dramatic things happen through the use of pivots chords. Let’s take another look at this song, shall we?

Here is a very wild sounding, yet totally sensible change of key at the chorus brought on by the fact that the E chord is the V in both A minor and A major. Simplicity itself, no?

Sometimes a pivot chord does not have to be a part of the actual key of the song as long as it has been used and it has become “familiar” to the listener. The old Motown tune “Get Ready” uses a chord progression of D – G – F in its verses, firmly establishing itself in the key of D to our ears (part of this is owing to the repetition of G to A in the intro!). But then look what happens in the choruses:

This is why I mentioned earlier that you can’t live and die by pivot chords (or any other “rules” of music theory, for that matter). The key changes in this song sounds seamlessly beautiful and yes there are reasons why it works, but isn’t it enough that it does work?

Studying The Masters

In songwriting, as in virtually anything you want to get good at – be it guitar playing, painting, cooking or just being a decent human being – you can learn a lot from the past. You can go back into the Dark Ages if you like or even the Not-Quite-So-Dark-Ages of the recent past. Two gifted songwriters to study would be Ray Davies of the Kinks and John Lennon. The earliest Kinks songs, such as You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night take a simple guitar riff and transpose it all over the fretboard in order to come up with songs whose changes of key are breathtaking.

And I’d like to leave you this lesson with a gift from John Lennon. He truly had a talent for setting up your expectations of a song and then spinning it all topsy-turvy in the simplest of ways. Here is the first verse of Happy Christmas (War Is Over). Note how Lennon sets up a progression (I – II – V – I) first in the key of A and then repeats the progression but this time transposed to the key of D. This was (and is) a very standard thing for songwriters to do in that it mimics the structure of twelve bar blues. But then instead of going to E (which would be the fifth) or returning to A, he starts the chorus with a G chord making us wonder if we’re now in another key. But no, he’s decided to totally commit to the key of D, going so far as to set up a IV – V cadence right at the start of the chorus. Okay, John, D it is. We’ll even end the chorus in a plagal cadence (G to D) to cement things down. Or do we? Because he then simply tosses out (almost like an afterthought, really) an E chord after the D to set up IV – V – I in the key of A just in time for the verse again. It’s all so simple and disarming but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

It’s good to be back! Until next week…

Peace

And to the fledgling songwriter, as well as the experienced music theorist, songs in minor keys can cause no end of emotional impact as well, usually frustration and bewilderment. But hopefully today we can dispel some of the mysteries and anxieties that surround these wondrous sounding songs.

Up ’til now, whenever we’ve been looking at melodies and chord progressions, for the most part I’ve stuck to working in major keys. This has been mostly owing to the fact that I wanted to get those of you with little background in theory some kind of footing before veering off into the uncharted territories of minor keys. Before we get too much further you might want to take a quick look at two past columns, Scales Within Scales and The Power of Three. There is information in both of these pieces that will serve as a foundation on which we can build a study of minor chord progressions without freaking ourselves out too much.

And let’s get this out of the way, too, shall we?

These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Preparing Your Palette

The first fun thing about minor keys is that you have three scales with which to work. Let’s use the key of A minor as an example. Here are the three minor scales in that key:

Now in order to come up with our chords for this key, we simply build triads upon each of the notes of our A minor scale. But you see how this is going to be, shall we say, interesting? Because each of our A minor scales provides us with different sets of chords with which to work, we have three “chord groups” at our disposal:

“So, David,” you’re saying, “we see how we come up with these chords. How do we choose which ones we want?” That, my friends, is the sheer beauty of working with minor keys. Any and all of these (plus others, as we’ll (eventually) see) are fair game.

Making Resolutions

One thing we have to remember, though, is that chord progressions should have a purpose. Well-constructed songs have a good sense of tonality, that feeling of “home” that we discussed last summer in Five To One.

(And I guess that this is as good a place as any to mention that you might also want to review Five To One as well as its companion piece, You Say You Want A Resolution.)

Musically speaking, fewer things nail down the tonality of a song as the V to I “authentic” cadence. Songs in minor keys actually give us an additional cadence, VII to I, that also helps us to establish our sense of home. Try out these chord sequences, done with chords taken from our “natural minor” palette:

And now again with the V chord taken from the harmonic (or melodic) minor, while the VII is still from the natural minor:

As you can hear, resolving to your “home” key from either V or VII works very well. You probably know lots of songs that use either (or even both) of these resolutions. Two Talking Heads numbers are, in fact, perfect two-chord examples of either transition:

You can hear how easily both these chord patterns slip in and out and back into the home key. There is a lot to be said for simplicity sometimes.

Here is another song that uses the I to V to I progression. But this time the V is from the natural minor chord group. Listen to how the changes seem subtler. Even though you do get a good feeling of “home,” the overall sense of tonality is somehow more elusive:

A favorite progression for songwriters of songs in minor keys is a straight descent from I to VI and back again. Here are a couple of examples:

Another progression you will often encounter extends this descent from I all the way to V. The start of Greensleeves (the same music as the Christmas carol What Child is This) is a good example with which I am sure many of you are familiar. Here are a couple of interesting variations on this idea:

You can see (and hear)(that is, if you’re playing along…) how the chords in Like A Hurricane go right “down the ladder,” from I to VII to VI to V. But Young opts to use the V from the natural minor chord grouping and you can just hear and feel that resolving to Am from Em is just not as dramatic as it is from G. It is the shift from the natural V to the natural VII that provides this song with its punch.

In our second example, we descend from I to VI (and I’m sure by now you’ve all caught on to the fact that this is almost always traditionally done within the natural minor chord grouping) and then go to III (also in the natural minor group) before grabbing the V from the harmonic/melodic group.

Going Fourth

As a rule, and please, please, please remember that there are often as many “exceptions” as “rules,” when writing in a minor key, the V will usually come from the harmonic or melodic minor chord groups. The III, VI and VII are most likely to come from the natural minor chord group. There are quite a few songs that use both of the possible V’s and we will look into this a bit next time out.

It is the IV in minor-keyed songs that tends to provide most of the interest. Listen to the difference in tone between these two songs, even though they are both in A minor (yes, I transposed the first one to make it easier!) and both use a I – IV – I – IV progression:

Songs that use the IV from the melodic minor chord group usually have a very dynamic, edgy feel to them. Think of songs like Somebody To Love or Another Brick in the Wall (part 2). Part of this is owing to the fact that even though we have already accepted the home key as whatever minor we happen to find ourselves (A minor in the case of this Moody Blues song, The Story In Your Eyes), we’re kind of half waiting for the song to change key on us.

One final note for today – if you are writing a song in a minor key, take the time to experiment. Listen for the changes between chords and feel free to go from one minor chord grouping to the next. Use chords from all three, as this song does:

See how it takes the III (the C chord) and VI (F) from the natural, the V from the harmonic (and/or melodic) and the IV from the melodic. Pretty cool, huh?

I hope that this has been helpful, even though we’re just scratched the surface. You’ll hopefully find that much of this will be useful next time out when we’ll look at modulation and key changes.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Let’s think about this for a minute. Okay, that’s long enough.

I should have said, “Let’s consider this statement from a songwriter’s point of view.” Whether or not you realize it, you yourself may be one of your biggest obstacles when it comes to songwriting. Think about how you go about writing – especially if you’re like me and happen to be one of those “let’s strum around and see what comes up” sort of folks. Well, chances are you pick up your guitar and the first chord you play will be an E, A, C, D or G. Unless, of course, you happen to be in a mad, sad or bad frame of mind and then you pound out an Em or an Am.

And then you start singing, humming, whistling along and before you know it you’ve got something that sounds pretty much like many of the things that you’ve already written. Or something that someone else has written.

Part of this is due to habit. We invariably fall into patterns. Playing the guitar, after all, is in a sense simply a series of patterns: chord progressions, rhythms for strumming or even how and when we use our fingers to pick the strings. With time, these habits become deeply ingrained. Now add to that the fact that (most of) our voices fall into a limited range to begin with and you may get an insight as to why it can be hard to consistently write interesting new material. Or even come up with a lead that doesn’t sound like it came out of the “Riffs ‘R’ Us” catalogue…

But take heart! You may not realize it, but you also have factory installed safeguards that can aid you in keeping those creative juices flowing. All it takes is using that marvelous brain of yours. That, and a little theory.

Today we’ll look at how you can restore some creativity to your melodies and we’ll also look at a sadly forgotten source which should amaze you no end. Life should always be this simple!

Finding Your Borders

In Singing In A New Year, we talked about how important it was to realistically evaluate your vocal capabilities. This is especially true when it comes to songwriting, or specifically, to writing melodies.

But before we get any further, let me also point out that this is also true when you are writing something for someone else to sing. Even if you are lucky enough to be writing for some vocalist who has a three and a half octave range, please remember this: the best melodies (“best” meaning “most memorable”) are ones that anyone can sing. This is how you can tell that what you’ve written is “catchy,” when you hear someone else humming or singing or whistling your melody.

Okay, then. Finding one’s range is truly not that difficult thing to do. Sing a note. Any note. What note is it? Well, one way of finding out is to try to match it to a note on your guitar. But instead of this turning into a snipe hunt, let’s reverse our logic. Play an open D or G string and see if you can sing that note. If you’re male, chances are likely that you can. Ladies, you might want to try your open E (1st) string or better yet, the G on the third fret of that string. Got it? Good (And by the way, this is much easier to do with a keyboard if you happen to have one laying around).

Now once you have your starting note, simply go in one direction, note by note, until you cannot accurately hit the next note. Then go in the other direction. Most people’s ranges are within two octaves. Remember, this is not a contest, it is an attempt to get some accurate data, so don’t “pad” your stats. It won’t help you in the long run and for our purposes, you’ll see that it will become an incredibly moot point. For the sake of an example, here’s my vocal range; You will first notice that I have compared it with the notes covered by the first four frets on the strings of my guitar. You will also see that I have taken the liberty of giving myself some important footnotes:

A bit high for a guy, but I’ve lived with that all my life (and as much as I keep waiting for my voice to change, I doubt very much that it’s going to happen at the age of forty-three). You can see that if I trim out all the “in my dreams” stuff, as well as the fringes of both sets of “can hit but not confident,” I’m left with a pretty typical range. For the sake of clarity, I am just going to write out those notes in the key of C major:

This is kind of funny, because, having done this, it’s easy to figure out why I’m very comforatble with songs in the key of C (or A minor). Just about everything is going to fall somewhere within my range. I’ve got a full octave (from C to shining C…)(just couldn’t resist that one, sorry) plus a little cushion on either side.

When I start a writing the melody of a song in the key of C, the chances are very likely that I will start on a note of the C major chord, that is, either C, E, or G. Now obviously, starting and ending on C would give my melody the greatest sense of tonality in that key, but with my range, starting on the high C leaves me little choice but to have a downward melody. Beginning a song on the low C pretty much dictates that I’m going to have a rising one. E and especially G, as you can see (again, sorry – I’m really in a punchy mood for some reason!), give me plenty of play on both sides. Anyway you look at it, I’ve got a fairly good amount of space to create a melody.

But I can’t write (or play) every song in the key of C, can I?

Framing And Filtering

I’m a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and no, you haven’t been mystically transported into another article on a non-guitar related website. Part of my enchantment with their films (and many many other silent movies) is directly related to my fascination with music, specifically the pop song as an art form.

You see, it is impossible not to be creative when you have no rules or boundaries with which to contend. But when you are working within a specific framework, whether it be a pop song or a watercolor painting or a haiku, this is when your creativity often has to work overtime. To be able to make something new, something unique and yours, and to make it still fit within a specific framework, well, needless to say, this takes some doing.

Do me a favor and take a look at the two ranges that I already printed up. First my full range and then my “C major range.” Look at what I’ve done. I’ve actually taken one limited range and limited it even further! Is this crazy?

Not entirely. You’ve already seen in the examples we used last time, that we are fully capable of using notes from “outside” of the given scale should they happen to suit our progression. I could, for instance, create a chord progression and an accompanying melody like this:

and it would work fine. And for those of you wondering where this “came from,” I simply made it up. Just now. In this case, the chord progression came first (because I knew I wanted to bring in as many “non C major” factors as possible) and the progression pretty much dictated the melody (again, the purpose of the melody was to bring in a number of notes from outside my C major scale).

(And for those of you wondering just how to write this out, theory-wise, well, it’s simpler than you might think: I, V of VI, VI, V of II, II, V of V, V)

But the point that I’m trying to make here is that you can constantly be giving yourself new frameworks in which to work by simply taking your capo and changing the key in which you’re working. Say I put my capo on the fifth fret and then try this same piece. Even though I am playing the same “chords,” by using the capo this progression is now in the key of F and you can see that I dramatically altered where it fits into my range:

You can see that I’ve put this in the “red zone” of my range and the chances are pretty good that it’s going to sound dreadful when I sing it. But I’ve really grown to like this chord progression so I’m going to first look at my range again, only this time I’m going to filter it for the key of F:

Can you see how radically different this is from my C range? Probably not, since the notes are virtually the same (Bb now in stead of B being the only change). But where in the key of C I had a full octave from root to root, I do not have that luxury here in F. My strongest range is actually between the fifths of this key (from C to C again). And this will effect my melody making process in no small way.

Let’s try to come up with another melody for this particular progression. One that I can sing. And since I still find myself in a “waltzing” mood, I’m going to try to keep the general feel of the piece the same. You, of course can feel free to play around with it as you see fit. Again, I want to tell you that I am doing this on the fly, simply strumming and singing nonsense syllables and this one is a first take as well:

Notice some of the small differences between these melodies. In the key of C, I started out on the low C and had nowhere to go but up. Here in F (starting on the higher C this time), I have play in both directions and my melody has many more curves to its shape.

Now, we could go on and do yet another example, say in the key of A or Ab where my range would be strongest between the thirds, but I’m hoping that you have gotten the gist of this. Just because your range is limited, that in no way limits what you might be able to do when it comes to composing a melody. Try not to think in terms of limitations but rather in terms of focus and framing and you will surprise yourself with what you can come up with. This is why I sincerely try to write each successive song I do in a different key from the last. Even if I don’t write in each of the twelve keys, I have many more chances of variety in eight than I do with just three. There’s a lot of territory to explore out there.

“Those Who Cannot Remember The Past…

…are doomed to repeat it,” or something like that, no? Well, as good or as poor a philosophy that this may be regarding world history, remembering the past is possibly the most important thing a songwriter can do. You have at your disposal such a vast catalogue of melodies and chord progressions and ideas that it can be positively overwhelming at times. But strangely enough, most people close their minds to much of this, simply because a lot of older songs are “not their style of music.”

My father played saxophone for small groups (three to five musicians) that played for weddings and various formal functions. Because of the age of the people involved, I heard a lot of music that was written in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. And I will still find myself humming a melody or two at the oddest times. And what melodies they are! If you’ve never taken the time to listen to “Deep Purple” (the song, not the group – although I like them, too) or “Old Cape Cod” or even something that should be familiar to everyone like “As Time Goes By,” do yourself a favor. Don’t just write off something because it doesn’t fit the image you’re molding yourself into.

Melodies are infectious. There is a good reason that musicians use the term “standard” to describe what is considered a classic song, regardless of what era in which it was written. Not only is it a “standard” song to be included in one repertoire, it also is a “standard” by which we measure quality and timelessness.

So the next time you’re in an elevator or a mall or a supermarket, don’t just roll your eyes at the music. Listen to the melody and try to understand what it has (or doesn’t have) that makes it work.

There are a lot of songs that I don’t like. But I will be the first to tell you that just because a song does nothing to me that does not mean it is not well-written and perhaps likely to become a new standard.

Don’t ever let yourself get caught in a “label” game. Let me challenge you to find something worthwhile in each and every song you hear – I don’t care if it’s rock, metal, rap, country, pop, Native American Indian, Indian, Northern African, salsa, blues, synthopop, and please stop me before I belabor the point.

Do yourself a favor – just as being a good guitarist involves listening as much as playing, being a good songwriter also requires that you listen to as much as you possibly can. It’s only when you open yourself up to inspiration that you find no end to your own creative possibilities.

If you think about it, there is little that hasn’t been done songwriting-wise. You’ve only got so many notes, so many chords. What hasn’t been said?

But the missing element will always be you. You have not been heard from. And you have a take on things that no one else does. Hey, if you write a stale love song (and get in line, there’s lots of them out there, mine included!), at least it’s your stale love song and you never know who is going to take it to heart. But unless you write it, no one ever will.

The most exciting stuff that is being done (regardless of where and when it is/was done) is the music that combines the best of the past in a new form, a form that you have molded and stamped with your vision.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in a future column. You can either drop off a note at any of the newly revamped Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Check out Theory/Songwriting Workshop 1: Putting Things Together.

Or, conversely, you’ve got a melody but you’re unhappy with the chords you’ve got. Not that they are necessarily bad, you’d just like to jazz it up a bit. Do something a little different.

Seriously, I cannot tell you how many emails or forum discussion threads I have seen that pretty much boil down to one of these two scenarios. And, of course, it’s not a subject that can be answered with a simple “just do this.” Well, it can, but you should always be highly suspicious of anyone who gives you such an answer. Even if it’s me…

So, over the next few months (every two to three weeks), we’re going to be examining how melodies and chords work together. And when I say “melodies,” I mean “leads” as well. After all, very often a lead is simply the guitar playing a melody of sorts. I’ve called these columns “workbooks” because not only will we look at specific examples from all kinds of songs, we’ll have exercises to try out original ideas as well. In fact, your input will pretty much determine whether or not we should make this a more or less permanent feature, much as the Easy Songs For Beginners page has become.

Two things before we start: First, you might want to read (or reread) my earlier column Christmas in June, which gives a very basic introduction to melody. Second (like you have to guess):

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Okay, three things. Please let me once again explain that when we discuss things in terms of music theory, we primarily deal with the “rule” rather than the “exception.” You will find that what we discover will cover a lot of ground and help to make a lot of sense out of why certain chord progressions or shapes of melodies “work,” why they make sense to our ears. But do remember that there will always be exceptions. Think of this as a guide rather than as an authority.

Chickens And Eggs

As you might expect, especially as A-J or I have probably said so a few hundred times, different people approach music from different angles. And perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in songwriting.

I think it’s safe to say that, when writing a song, many people (myself included) first come up with a chord progression and then proceed to work from there. Or as Paul Simon once said, “I pick a key and start to play.” And actually, we’re going to start out even more simply than that; we’re going to just strum a single chord. Pick a chord, any one chord. I don’t care what it is. Have you got it? Good. Now choose a tempo and strum your chord.

And now, while strumming your chord, close your eyes and sing.

“Sing what?” you ask (and you’re probably also thinking, “Oh God! There was some devious reason for him to discuss singing and playing last week! (Singing In A New Year) We should have known…”). Doesn’t matter at this point. “La, la ,la” is perfectly fine. Come up with a melodic phrase, nothing more than two to four measures long, depending on your tempo of choice. The other important thing is to give your melody a bit of movement. Don’t just hang onto the same note for eternity. The first chord I picked was A minor. Here’s what I’ve just come up with (and I’ve included the single note TAB in case you need it):

As you can see (and hear), this melody simply dances around the notes of an A minor chord (A, C, and E) with a few other notes (B, G and D) thrown in for good measure. One of the reasons I included a TAB for this is so that some of you will make the connection that there’s not much difference between my melody and a slightly jazzed up Am picking pattern. Sometimes this is all it takes.

You can construct a melody with a relatively small range of notes, like this:

All this melodic phrase consists of is the upper voice of a blues/rock shuffle – 5, 6 and (flatted) 7 of the C major chord (and if you’re not sure what a shuffle is, then please check out the either Dan Lasley’s latest article (Playing Along) or the latest Easy Songs For Beginners piece, Before You Accuse Me) . That’s hardly a stretch for anyone’s voice.

If you’re more daring, try giving yourself a melody with a bit more of a range. Take a look at this phrase from McCartney’s Eleanor Rigby:

An important thing to glean from these last two examples is that, when it comes to melodies, you are never restricted to using only the notes in your given key. The Bb in the Beach Boys’ Do It Again as well as the C# in Eleanor Rigby are not part of the scales in their key signatures, but fit in just fine with the melody line. In fact, try it yourself using a regular B or C in the respective songs and see just how weird it sounds. It’s not that you can’t use the B or C, (both are in fact used in each song in question), it’s just that in this particular phrase, it sounds out of place.

Time And Place

Once you’ve tried single chord melody phrases for a while, the next logical step is to attempt to construct a melody (or better yet just a single phrase) over a chord progression. As always, start out fairly simply and gradually work your way up to more complex patterns. In regards to the chord progression, that is. Feel free to make your melodic phrase as simple or complex as your heart desires.

Consider that we already know that many, many, many, many songs are comprised of I, IV and V, in some order. Here are some examples of some phrases using similar, and occasionally identical, progressions:

You see that even though each pair of songs use the same chord progressions (although I have taken liberty in two places with the original key – Peter Pumpkinhead, for instance, I believe is in the key of A, but the progression is still I, IV) the melodies are markedly different. Some use long drawn-out notes; others jump all over the place and some very neatly rise and fall from one point to the next. This is why, even though there are a limited number of chord progressions, there can be so many different songs. Different people sing in different styles and have different ranges and vocal nuances and quite often songs will refect just that.

But don’t just take my word for it – let’s put it to the test. I’ve complied some chord progressions that are (and have been) fairly commonly used in songwriting. I’ve also taken the liberty to put them in certain guitar-friendly keys. Your task, should you decide to be so bold, is to come up with a melodic phrase (or two or three) for each one. Your own phrase. If you come up with a copy of a song you know, then you have to throw it back into the waters of your mind and start fishing all over again. If you’re happy with your results, then please by all means, send me a copy. If you don’t have a notation software, then simply write it out:

Progresion 1:

1st measure: G (quarter note), quarter rest, B (half note)
2nd measure: C (three eighth notes),
etc.,

I will write you to make certain I’ve got it right. Promise. Okay, here they are:

Again, please feel free to try out some of these. You will find it to be a good step towards developing your songwriting skills. And, believe it or not, your playing as well. You can choose whether or not to send them to me. In two or three weeks, we’ll do another “workshop,” this time starting with the melody and working out a progression and I’ll also not only show you where these particuar examples came from, but also share some of the melodies that you came up with. It should be an interesting and enlightening time. Next week we’ll talk about what Paul Simon said about “picking a key.” And we’ll also touch upon some great sources to find and study complexly stunning yet memorable melodies.

Once again I do need to drop a thank you to everyone who has written in the past month or so. Owing to all the year end projects at my “real job,” I’ve been a bit behind in both answering email and churning out these columns (not to mention the Songs For Beginners page). Your patience has been much appreciated and I hope that things have finally settled down for a while at least. As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or a topic you’d like to see covered in a future column here at Guitar Noise. You can either drop off a note at the appropriate Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Check out Theory/Songwriting Workshop 2: Home On Your Range

Hi and welcome aboard. You know, I used to think that writing a good introduction for this article would be easy. But it’s not. Maybe that’s why our esteemed Guitar Columnist, David Hodge, let me write it. Oh, I almost forgot to introduce myself: my name is Abel Petneki, and this week’s article is going to be about “sustained tones” (until we manage to find a better term for this…). I can almost hear you murmuring “What’s this guy talking about?” Well, to make a long story short, a while ago I e-mailed David about a phenomenon found in many of the songs of the British band Oasis. After a few e-mails, we decided that even the 5689 miles between Chicago and Budapest couldn’t stop us from writing an article together. Anyway, the Oasis songs may sound pretty simple, but there’s something strange going on there: the chords seem to remain the same and change at the same time. Sounds interesting, huh? Okay…brief summary: check. On to you, David, then…

Thanks, Abel. Three columns ago (But Then Again…), we examined a technique in which we used only three or four strings in order to form a chord while leaving, in those particular examples, the outer strings (E, B and E) free to resonate to their hearts’ desire. I have called this effect a “drone” or “droning.” Which it is. But this is a very simple explanation and I think that it’s time we explored a little more of the theory behind this and see what is actually going on. Of course, this means we need to use our official disclaimer:

These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of the song. It is intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Okay, now that we’ve got that taken care of, it’s time we took a closer look.

I agree, David. But before we get really technical, let’s see an other example for “droning”. There’s a song called The Masterplan by Oasis. It’s a slow ballad — at least it begins that way. We’ll take a look at the intro, which is played on acoustic guitar and goes like this:

Bet you couldn’t name these chords! :-) The only thing I can tell that they are somewhere near A minor, and they have a lot of tension. Then there’s that descending bassline to further complicate matters. So I dialled 1-800-HODGE for help…

In this chord sequence, Abel has correctly pointed out two things. First is the “tension” you can feel in the chord voicing itself. Playing the 5th fret on the G string sounds the C note, and you are also playing the open B string for all it’s worth. These notes are a half-step apart (or a minor second if you prefer) and that is about as dissonant as you can get. Any interval of a second, major or minor, tends to catch our attention in a very big way. But it is an odd dissonance in that there is a promise of resolution, of bringing the tension to an end at some point. Technically speaking, this chord is an Am. Here the function of the open strings serves to provide an interesting chord voicing, which in turn provides enough dissonance and tension to be dramatic yet not unpleasant to the ear.

The second thing that Abel noted is that there is indeed a descending bassline, here being played out on the D string. This movement, while creating even more dissonance, actually distracts from the B and C dissonance by drawing your attention to the notes that are in motion. In fact, if you have a copy of the song you can hear the acoustic guitar’s descending bassline doubled first by the bass and then by the orchestral accompaniment. These two factors of the chord voicing, with its inherent dissonance, along with the descending bassline, (not to mention the droning of the A and both E strings) combine to make the introduction to “The Masterplan” compelling. It really draws you into the song whether you want to be or not.

I’d like to point out as well that I have heard (and seen) people play this using the fifth fret of the B string instead of playing it open. In essence, they are simply doubling the high E string, and that’s perfectly okay. But personally, I ‘ll take the dramatic effect of the open B string any day.

Oh, in case you’re interested, there is a technical name for this type of dissonance created by a descending bassline (as well as by other similar things). It’s called an appoggiatura and it’s something that we’ll be discussing in the very near future when we look again at melodies.

I’m not sure if Noel Gallagher had all this in mind while writing the song. Maybe he should visit Guitar Noise to learn about the essence of his own style…

For the next song, we’re going to leave “droning” and see another technique, which we’ll call “sustained tones” for now. Please don’t confuse “sustained” with “suspended.” Yes, there are suspended chords – “sus” for short – in the examples we’re going to use, but it’s not that. Rather, it is the sustaining of certain notes throughout the chord progression or melody. Confused? Well, Talk Tonight (again by Oasis) is a good example for this – and more!

Try to keep an eye (or ear) on any notes that do not change through the whole verse. Another thing to look out for is all the tension the C9 chord has – you’ll definitely notice it the minute you play the song.

As Abel stated, a sustained tone is one note being held (often continually) while the harmony or chord pattern around it changes. This may not seem all that different than a “drone,” but it does differ in a significant way. Usually a drone is a “given,” a product of the instrument itself, usually owing to its construction (like a bagpipe) or to its tuning (like a zither or, for that matter, your guitar). A sustained tone is one that is chosen by the musician or writer, purely for its effect. In this song, it is the D note (3rd fret on the B string) that is the sustained tone. By playing this note over the various chord changes, we both create and then resolve disonant intervals. Here, the interval in question is, again, a second, but this time it is a major second, the full step between the D and the E (open E string). It is very interesting to listen as the tension actually gets “edgier” with each successive chord. We are finally freed from all this dissonance by the G. The C9 has the most tension because it contains four notes that are, technically speaking, back to back to back to back – those being the Bb, C, D and E. Fortunately, though, the C is on the 3^rd fret of the A string and thus some much needed separation is provided between the C and D. Otherwise it would be quite a muddle! The C add 9 is almost a welcome relief, even though it’s almost as bad.

Speaking of muddle, you may have noticed that both songs we mentioned are played on an acoustic. If you’d use a lot of distortion, the open strings would make one big pile of noise out of the song. The same applies to Wonderwall. Although…Oasis played this song using slight distortion in August when I saw them playing live here in Budapest. They were really good (and really loud), as always. But let’s get back to our regular program here. Wonderwall is a love song written by Noel for his future wife. I think that’s pretty romantic. But why call it Wonderwall? Is that a word? Well, Noel’s favorite Beatle, John Lennon reportedly used it instead of “wonderful” – like “that’s just wonderwall!” And “Wonderwall Music” was the title of Harrison’s first solo album as well. So it’s a Beatles reference; Oasis songs tend to have a lot of those. That’s for some background info, now let’s get down to business…

This is yet another example of the use of sustained tones. But instead of one note, this time it is two notes, the G and D, which are sustained over the underlying chords. Usually this term is used to describe an aspect of the melody (and again, more on this in the very near future) but for now it will suit our purpose. This chart will help out a bit:

If you examine this chart closely, you can see how the G and D notes (played on the 3rd fret of the first and second strings) are notes needed to form each of the chords in the pattern, albeit they have different functions in each. The D, for instance, is the seventh in the Em7, the fifth in the G, the root of the Dsus4 and the fourth in the A7sus4. By giving it (and the G note) such prominent placement in these chord voicings, you cannot help but focus your attention on them.

It might also interesting to point out that some of these chords also contain a third note which is also held over through the next chord. The B in the Em7 and the A in the D, for instance. Even though the changes between the successive chords are very subtle (note-wise), you can hear how radical some of the changes are.

I’m sure that most of you are familiar with other songs that use this technique of sustained tones. Here are two more examples in the key of G (and we should note here that Wonderwall is actually played in the key of A because they use a capo on the second fret…):

As I mentioned, these particular examples use the same sustained tones (the G and D notes) as used in Wonderwall. There are, of course, examples of this using different notes (on different strings) which will will be looking at in the upcoming weeks. The important thing to glean from all this is that the ability to see individual notes as parts of several chords can be a great aid to writing music, whether you are trying to come up with a melody or a chord progression.

It’s also a good way of spicing up your songs – you can get away with the simplest chord progression by putting some thought to it. Using sustained notes also makes the chord changes sound smoother by having strings which resonate continuously.

By the way, if you want to track down any of the Oasis songs to hear them for yourself (and Abel and I both agree that you really should; Noel Gallagher is a fine example for songwriters to study), then you should know that The Masterplan and Talk Tonight can be found on The Masterplan (1997), and Wonderwall on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (1995).

Well, that’s about it for this week. I hope all of you enjoyed this co-presentation. Next week, it’s going to be just David again (it is his column, after all!). Keep strumming!

And I’d like to thank Abel for both the ideas for the topic today, as well as for this cool way of bringing it to the page. It was a bit of work but it’s been a lot of fun. I don’t know about you, but I hope we’ll be able to talk him into writing another article to post on the Guitar Columns page sometime soon.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and Abel can be reached at petneki@mail.datanet.hu

Until next week…

Peace.

But first, last week’s answers:

1. a) major
   b) minor
   c) minor
   d) major
   e) minor
   f) major
2. a) C#, E, G#
   b) F#, A#, C#
   c) E, G#, C (or B#, if you prefer)
   d) A, C, Eb
   e) G, B, D#
   f) C, E, G#
   g) B, D#, F#
   h) Bb, Db, F
   i) D, F, A
   j) F, Ab, B (or Cb, if you prefer)
   k) G#, C, D#
   l) Eb, G, Bb
   m) C, Eb, Gb

Taking The Fifth

Hate to do this to you good folks, but we’ll need to have a scale with which to form some examples and (well, you know the drill by now!)…

As we’ve discussed before, a chord formed from a triad will consist of the I, III and V of any given scale. As we learned last week, the particular intervals of the third (that is, whether they be major or minor thirds) are what will determine which of our four basic chords we have.

In the case of the major and the minor chords (being the two we use most frequently), the “key” note is the third. Since the root and the fifth are the same in any given major or minor chord, this makes perfect sense. In a C major chord, the three notes are C, E and G. In C minor, the notes are C, Eb and G. In the article Happy New Ear, we went over this pretty well. There is quite a distinction between the sound of a major chord and its namesake minor.

And this is a good thing because we usually define the tonality of any given piece of music in terms of its key. Teach Your Children is in D major. Have A Cigar is in E minor. This sense of tonality is, not to put too much importance on it or anything, fairly vital to how we learn to play music, write music and analyze music.

The guitar, like many polyphonic instruments (any instrument capable of sounding two or more separate notes at a time), is quite adept at masking tonality. In Scales Within Scales we briefly touched upon what I called “neutered chords.” These are chords that are made up of just the roots and fifths – there are no thirds. These are the mainstay of many a rock or metal guitarist. Here are a few examples:

I’ve always found it incredibly amusing that the “common” name given to these ambiguous voicings is “power chords.” Now there’s a term of modern arrogance if there ever was one…

Technically, writers will designate these chords as “whatever 5″ or “such and such (no 3rd).” I’m sure you’ve all run into these before.

Up In The Air

Something else you’ve all run into before (and we discussed in Multiple Personality Disorder) is the “suspended chord.” A suspended chord is created when we replace the third in the triad with the fourth. Occasionally one may use the second and sometimes people use both. Here’s the example with which the majority of you are most familiar:

Here the third (F#) is replaced by either the fourth (the G in the Dsus4) or the second (the E in the Dsus2). This chord is typically used in passing, going from one point to another. It rarely serves any other purpose than to just liven things up a bit or supporting a melody line.

It has become standard practice to assume that any chord marked “sus” refers to the use of the fourth, but as we’ll later discuss, that’s not always a valid assumption.

By the way, here’s your first homework problem and I’ll admit it’s not truly a fair question. Here are five suspended chords taken right from a standard guitar chord chart. And I’ll pretty much guarantee that these are how most of us learned them. However, two of them are actually not suspended chords, at least not by the definition in virtually every textbook on theory. Which two are they?

For those of you who picked C and G, congratulations. No more homework for you this week! For those of you who didn’t, the key to the definition is that the fourth replaces the third. Both the C and G chords carry the third on two separate strings. In our examples the Csus has an E note on the open E (1st) string, while the Gsus sports a B note on the second fret of the A (5th) string. But, just to prove I’m a good sport, no homework for you either. As I said, it was a tricky question. And it gets even trickier as we move onward.

Sixes And Sevens And Nines (oh my!)

Most of the other chords you might encounter involving adding an additional note (or notes) to your basic triad. This means, obviously, that you will have a chord made up of at least four, and possibly more, notes. First, Let’s expand our C major scale a bit:

The sixth chord of any key is created by adding the note at the sixth interval from the root to the entire triad. You are not replacing anything, you are building onto the original structure. If we look at our C major scale, you can see that a C6 chord would consist of C, E, G and A. Similarly, a G6 would have the G, B, D and E notes.

Seventh chords we covered fairly well in Happy New Ear. If there’s any real trick to them, it’s in remembering that whenever you see any chord with just the “7″ designation, it means to add the minor seventh interval. Only use the major seventh when it specifically calls for it by name with the “maj7″ designation.

When we get into ninths, elevenths and thirteenths, things begin to get both interesting and confusing at the same time. For the sake of not overworking our already overworked editor (and esteemed webmaster), I’m going to gloss over these for the time being. The most important thing for you to remember right now is that each of these chords is dependent upon its predecessor for its creation. You cannot have a ninth without using the seventh (and the minor seventh, at that), you cannot have the eleventh without both the seventh and the ninth and so on. If you look at this in notation, it might make a little more sense:

You can see why I called them “stackables” last time out. All you have to do is keep adding on every other note until you run out of space…

Another important thing to note is that the “m” designation for “minor” (should) always refer to the original triad and not to the numbered interval. Thus an Am9, for example, would be your A minor triad (A, C, E) with the minor 7th (G) and finally the 9th (B) tacked on.

Finally, you can also simply “add” a note. Really. C (add9) would be C, E, G and D. Note that this is different from Csus2 in that the D does not replace the third (E). As the name states, we simply throw another note (or however many are named) onto the pile.

The Name Game

And this is how it all becomes very confusing. Here are four notes – A, C, E and G. What chord is it? The way I’ve written it out might make you think that it is an Am7. That certainly works. But how about C6? We’ve already done that one, haven’t we? C, E, G and A. Yes, that works as well. But we can also go overboard – say, Gsus4sus2 (add 6). You’re right, there’s no D to serve as the fifth, but we’ve seen notes dropped out of chords before. We could always call it Gsus4sus2 (no 5)(add 6). Not to mince around or anything…

The point is that a big part of what a chord is named depends on what it is being used for. You may not know it, but context is a vital part of any chord. I’ve told you before but it really needs repeating. Music is motion. Melodies and chord progressions move from one point to another and that movement helps us to define matters. Musicians and songwriters should be constantly aware of the purpose of a chord pattern, of the function that a particular chord can serve in a song. “Sounding good” is always nice, but believe it or not there are reasons why certain progressions “sound good.”

We will be examining all of our chords individually at some point this fall/winter. This will include using them in songwriting exercises as well as looking at how they have been used in the past by other songwriters. I would also recommend that, in your spare time, you pick a chord, any chord, and write out its component notes. You’re riding your car/bus/train to work/school/home and you either do it in your head or on a piece of paper (but not if you’re driving!!!). This kind of practice will help you immeasurably, especially when we get to working on scales and leads.

As always, feel free to write me with any questions, comments, concerns or topics that you’d like to see covered in the future. Email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or just drop a line in at the Guitar Forums.

Until next week…

Peace.

Click here to see last weeks answers.

Like I told you last time, nothing to it, right?

Before we get going too far, you might want to take a little time to reread (or read for the first time) Jimmy Hudson’s A Study On Intervals as well as Happy New Ear. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you to get back.

Okay? Okay.

Interval Interlude

Last time out I showed you a list of all the musical notes that we have available to us. And, in case you’ve forgotten, I happen to have them right here:

You’ll recall that each one is separated by a half-step. When we arrange these notes according to a specific pattern of whole-steps and half-steps, we create a scale, like this one – our old friend, the C major scale:

Here, except in the two indicated places, the notes are separated by whole steps. The Roman numerals are indicators of the name of the interval from the root (or “I” – which in this case is C). An interval, as I’m sure you remember, is the distance between two notes. It is the basic unit of harmony. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page:

So you see that the interval from C to E is called a third. C to A is sixth. C to F is a fourth. And so on. And don’t forget that there are all the half-steps that aren’t part of the C major scale. You all know that, but let’s put them out on the table for easy reference, shall we?

Okay, are we all still here? Good, because here comes the tricky part.

The interval of the third is the key component to the assembly of chords. But, naturally, it’s not as cut and dried as we’d like to think it might be. How so? Well, let me ask you – what is the interval from C to E? Right, it’s a third. How about C to Eb? Technically, this is also a third, but we call it a minor third. A minor third is a step-and-a-half away from your starting note instead of two full steps. To distinguish between the two types of intervals, we call the “regular” third (two full steps) a major third.

This bears repeating (“…one more time!”). C to E is a major third. C to Eb is a minor third. You can see that. But let’s look at the other possible combinations available to us in the C major scale alone, shall we? Here’s the scale again (and remember the actual scale is designated with the Roman numerals):

C to E we know. C# is not part of the C major scale so we can ignore it. The next note we come to is D, so let’s look at the interval of D to F. Is it a major or minor third? Because F is three half-steps away from D it must be a minor third. Do you follow this? Start at the D and count the half steps until you reach F. E is one whole step away and the next whole step would be F#, not F. So D to F# is a major third while D to F is a minor third.

This is vital for you to know. Virtually all chord theory is based on thirds and you have to have this concept down before it will make sense to you. Let’s look at all of the possible intervals of a third that occur in the C major scale. If you want to, cover up the right hand column and test yourself:

How’d you do? Probably a lot better than you thought you might! All right, take a deep breath and get ready to tackle the final two pieces of the puzzle.

Stackables

Harmony (or disharmony (dissonance), for that matter) is created by the use of two or more notes. When two notes are played at the same time, a harmonic interval is created. If the notes are played separately so that you hear them as a sequence of notes, then we have a melodic interval. Some intervals sound pleasing to us and some are, shall we say, an acquired taste (which is the same exact phrase used by my good friends to describe my singing voice…). Major and minor thirds both fall into the “pleasant” category.

Chords are created by the use of three or more notes. And yes, this is open to debate. Some people (authorities on the subject, no less) will say that two notes are all you need to make a chord. And there actually is an argument for this, particularly if you use two notes in the interval of a fifth. But rather than getting drawn into this bit of nitpicking, let’s just say that it takes a minimum of three notes to define a specific chord. I’ve shown you this example before and it’s worth looking at again:

Here are two notes, E and G, along with their TAB locations on the guitar. Now how many chords can you name that use these two notes? Even someone who has been playing for a relatively short time should be able to name at least two and possibly upwards of four or five:

But if we add a third note, C in this case, the number of possible chords drops dramatically, as we can see:

Now, while there are other chords that use these notes, most of us see these notes and the brain automatically clicks in with “C major chord, check.”

And the C major chord will always be made up of these three notes no matter where you play them on the fretboard, as shown here:

Let’s look again at the first C major chord I showed you. In notation, it is a note on each consecutive line. This would mean that it is every other note, which we have already confirmed by stating that the chord is made up of the C, E and G notes. This method of forming a chord, basically taking one note and stacking the following two alternate notes on top of it, is the most basic form of harmony. These chords are called triads. It’s a helpful name in two respects: first, it automatically makes you think that there must be three notes in its makeup. Second, and more important, you can use the name as a way to remember how these chords are made – you take a note, add its third and then add the third of the second note.

That might be a bit confusing at first. Most people will tell you that a triad is made up of the root (“I”), the third and the fifth. And they are absolutely correct. Our example bears this out. E is the third of C and G is its fifth. But try looking at it another way, at least for a moment – E is the third of C and G is the third (albeit a minor third) of E.

There are a couple of reasons for looking at it like this. Do you remember waaaaay back when I first introduced you to primary and secondary chords of any given key? Frankly, for a while there I couldn’t remember either. But I did! It’s back in the second part of our introduction to open tuning, (Open Tuning Part 2) of all places! Do you want to know where those chords come from? They are simply triads built upon the notes of the major scale (D in that particular example). Here’s the C major scale we’ve been working with and the triads that you can make with it:

And, yes, we’ll deal with that pesky VII (what the hell is a “B diminished anyway?”) in just a bit! But first, let’s get to the real crux of today’s topic:

The Four Basic Chord Groups

Okay, now you are comfortable in distinguishing the difference between a major third and a minor third, right? Good. And you’re fine with the concept of triads, as well? Great! Let’s apply our brains for a moment then…

We can reason that, since triads are made by stacking a root note with its third and the subsequent third, and since there are two types of thirds at our disposal to use for this task, there must be four possible types of triads. They would look like this:

We all agree on this?

Let’s take a quick look back at the triads that we were able to make from the C major scale. All the major chords (C, F and G) are made up of a root followed by a major third and then a minor third. These chords fit the profile of “Triad B” and, if you were so inclined not to take my word for it, a quick run through all twelve major chords would prove to you that, indeed, all the major chords do. Likewise, you can see that all minor chords fit the profile of “Triad D.” Amazing how these things work out, isn’t it?

We haven’t yet covered the two remaining types of chords, but now’s as good a time as any to introduce you to them. Here’s the four basic types of chords, based on triads, and how you build them:

“Does this really work?” you might ask. Try it out for yourself and see. First get your trusty list of “all the possible notes” so you have a handy reference:

Okay! F major chord? Start with F as your root, go up a major third (A) and then go up a minor third (C). Pretty easy, huh? B minor would start with B then go up a minor third to D and then a major third to F#. This is working out rather well.

A augmented is actually a pretty chord. According to the directions, all I need to do is begin with A and then add two major thirds, which would be C# and then F. This is what it looks like on a chord chart:

Diminished chords are dark and mysterious (to me, anyway) and can add a lot of tonal color to a piece. They are difficult to put on a guitar in “root, third, fifth” format because of the way a guitar is tuned. So once you have the notes you have to come up with different shapes for them. Let’s see, a D diminished would be D (root), F (minor third) and Ab (minor third). Here would be one way to play it:

As I mentioned earlier, we will be discussing all of these chords types in the (near) future, taking special care to look at their functions in melodies, harmonies and songwriting. It should be a lot of fun.

And speaking of fun, here’s this week’s homework:

1. Identify the following intervals as major or minor thirds:
   • B to D#
   • F to Ab
   • C# to E
   • E to G#
   • F# to A
   • Ab to C
2. List the three notes that make up the following chords (you’re already given the root as part of the name!):
   • C# minor
   • F# major
   • E augmented
   • A diminished
   • G augmented
   • C augmented
   • B major
   • Bb minor
   • D minor
   • F diminished
   • G# major
   • Eb major
   • C diminished

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in upcoming columns. You can either drop a line at the Guitar Forums or reach me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next week…

Peace.

Human beings seem to be curious by nature. It accounts for a lot of things, I suppose. And anytime I might forget this fact I get a gentle reminder through the questions that we receive both via email and the Guitar Forums.

And it occurred to me, looking over all the questions about scales and leads and chords and melodies that I have gotten, that it’s as a good time as any to answer these as fully as possible. But in order to do that I realized that I would need to take everyone back to the beginning steps of music theory once again – to give you a more thorough introduction to it than I did last November (Theory Without Tears).

As I promised last week, these lessons will be short and (hopefully) easy to grasp. What I didn’t tell you, is that I’ve also included some “homework problems” for those of you who might want to try out your newfound knowledge. The answers to any given week’s problems will be printed the following week. In addition to these “problems,” there will also be “exercises” for you to try out (although not necessarily both on any given week). The “exercises,” unlike the problems, will not have “correct” answers. These are intended to help you explore different aspects of theory. For instance, I might give you a chord progression and ask you to submit a melody line, or a riff, or even a lead line. Likewise, I might give you a melody line and ask you to put a chord progression to it. In these exercises, I will then take the time to go over your answers in a following column (which will probably be two weeks later than the initial column, due to the logistics of things).

For those of you who are worried that this will keep me from covering other topics, rest assured that this shall not be the case. I’ve been compiling a list of topics since the day I started writing for Guitar Noise (a lot of them, as you know, are suggestions taken directly from your emails and requests) and at last check I was far from the bottom of that list! It simply means that I’m going to have to write more! So please bear with any “growing pains” that we might experience in the upcoming months! Hopefully, it will be worth it for all of us.

Building Blocks

Just like genetic scientists, we have basic units with which to build music, whether a melody, a chord or whatever. We use notes as our foundation for tonal music (and for the time being we are only going to concern ourselves with the tonal qualities of music – the rhythmic aspects of it will have to wait ‘til a later date).

According to the conventions of music theory, there are just twelve notes to deal with, each separated by what we call a half-step. This is a given fact. Now, yes, we can argue this all we want to, but it will not change how we perceive music. Some things became written in stone looooong ago. Don’t worry about the why’s for now. But do note that the half-step is very important to us because on the guitar every fret designates a half-step.

These are the 12 notes that we have. Please observe that some of the notes have more than one name:

The note after G# (or Ab, if you prefer) will be A again. Then the cycle starts all over. If I were to tab out these notes, starting from the open low E (6th) string, it would look like this:

Now if you take a minute to think about this, you’ll understand why we tune the guitar the way we do. The fifth fret of the 6th string is the same note as the open 5th string and so on.

You might also want to take the time to realize that you now have in your possession a great tool to help you read music! We can be so sneaky some times…

In some ways, it’s easy to think that music was set up by the same people who brought us weights and measures BM (before metric). All we can do is learn it the same way we’ve learned anything – memorize it first and ask questions later. I don’t really espouse this myself, but it does work. The majority of you could probably show me how to play an Am7 chord, but I’d wager that at least a quarter of you could not tell me the notes of which it is made.

Another given we have from the powers-that-be is the composition of scales. A scale is the sequence of notes used from a specific note to the next occurrence of that same note. This sequence is usually a combination of whole-steps and half-steps. Let’s look at our notes again (and I am going to use small numbers to mark the half-steps):

A major scale uses the following steps: root, whole-step, whole-step, half-step, whole-step, whole-step, whole-step and half-step. Utilizing this pattern, we can easily come up with the A major scale (and it’s called an A major scale because it starts out on the note of A):

I kept the numbers in for another sneaky reason. Since you know that the notes keep on repeating themselves in an endless cycle, you can actually use this method to figure out any major scale your heart desires. Go ahead and pick a key, any key. Use that note at your “1″ and then write out all the half-steps until you get to “13.” Done? Now just take the notes in your 1,3,5,6,8,10, 12 and 13 positions and voila! – instant major scale. Piece of cake, huh?

But, for your own sake, don’t get hooked on this method. Do yourself a favor and try to acclimate yourself to figuring it out note by note, step by step. When we get to discussing aspects of chord theory we use numbers that will mean totally different things and there’s no sense of adding to the confusion! After all, there are only twelve major scales to deal with (and it’s highly doubtful that you’ll ever use four of them!).

The major scale is incredibly important to us because, as we’ll see next week, so much of chord theory is based around it. In the meantime, though, let’s look at the A major scale on the fretboard:

You might also want to realize that, if we wanted to, we could extend this scale down from the low A as well. Of course, we’d only get to the E (open 6th string), but it would give us three more notes. It’s always a good idea to extend any scales as far as you can on the fretboard. For now, though, we will content ourselves to keeping within the confines of the fifth fret on any given string.

Keys To The Kingdom

For reasons, which, again, must have seemed great at the time, the C major scale is constructed in such a way that it has no flats or sharps. Because the interval between E and F (as well as between B and C) is a half-step, this works out perfectly.

Other keys have any number of sharps or flats and, believe it or not, there’s actually a pattern to it! Look:

This is where the infamous “Circle of Fifths” comes from. If you look at these as chords instead of keys, you can see that each one is the fifth of the following chord. And since you realize that F# and Gb are the same note, the “circle” is indeed complete. A song written in a key of seven flats would be in Cb, which is B. For all intents and purposes, though, people tend to stick within this circle. I mean why would you even think about writing in a key that had more sharps (or flats) than there are notes?

Before we close with some exercises, let’s take a look at the C major scale, both in notation and in TAB:

For the sake of convenience, I bracketed the actual C major scale and ran the scale’s “extensions” on both sides of it as far as I could go within our set parameters. This really becomes important when you’re trying to work out bass lines (yes on your guitar) as well as leads and riffs.

Someone once asked me how people go about taking a scale and making a lead or a riff out it. There are really no set rules, per se. It’s simply a matter of working with the notes you have and coming up with (a) something that fits the songs and (b) something that you like. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. I know that this is going to be showing my age (“God, doesn’t he know any songs from this century?”), but Cat Stevens’ Wild World is a good example of what you can do with a simple scale in first position. Here’s the notation and TAB for the riffs in the chorus:

As you can see, the first riff is just a descending C major scale. Nothing to it, right? The second riff consists of a pattern of G, A and C notes. The rhythm is slow, so even though the riff is made up of sixteenth notes it’s still very straightforward.

What I like about this particular piece is that if you have two guitars, it’s very easy to add a harmony part to the first riff. The second guitarist starts on A (second fret on the G string) (this makes two thirds of an F chord, by the way) and then continues down to the open A string. Since the following chord is a G, this second voice leads right into that note in the bass:

There are, of course, plenty of leads and riffs that are based around simple scales and we will be covering quite a few in the months ahead. If you’d like to whet your appetite in the meantime, might I suggest you try Paul’s article Easy Guitar Riffs. And there’s plenty more that will be coming to Guitar Noise in the months ahead.

Homework:

1. The vast majority of music for the guitar is in the keys of C, G, D, A, E and their respective relative minors. Since we’ve already done A and C for you, write out the note of the scales for the
   • G major
   • D major
   • E major
2. Using either notation or TAB, map out where the notes of these scales are on your fretboard. Be sure to extend your scales as far as you can in either direction using any notes found between the open strings and the fifth fret on all your strings.
   • G major
   • D major
   • E major
3. You might want to go back and reread the first part of Scales Within Scales for this but I think you can do it! Write out the notes for the following scales:
   • D Natural Minor
   • D Harmonic Minor
   • B Natural Minor
   • B Harmonic Minor

As you can see, the “homework” is pretty minimal! The answers will be here next week. We’ll also show you how to build any type of chord your heart desires!

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, corrections, concerns or requests for topics to cover in future articles. Or just to say “hi.” You can reach me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or just drop a note over at the Guitar Forums. So, until next week, then.

Peace.