Lesson 7: Chord Construction Made Easier (part 1)

Lesson 6 was a bit too much in the deep end. So I was after something to help me understand it in a more structured way, something with numbers (which for me was going to be a simpler way).

To find the notes that make a chord:

• Put your 2nd finger on the root note. That's note 1 in the sequence. So in the key of C, and the chord of C, you need to find the root note on the top, fat, E string. That's going to be the 8th fret on the top E string. This puts your fingers in a good starting point for the notes that make up the chord of C.
• The next note in the sequence is 2 frets up, where your little finger is sitting over the 10th fret. That's going to be a D and it is note 2 in the sequence.
• That sets you up for the note pattern shown blow (in red crosses). The rest of the notes look like this:

X marks the spot to the pattern to the notes above.

Also numerically (where it makes sense for me!)

To build a (MAJ) chord you want to take the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of the (MAJ) scale.

So in C you want 1 - C, 3 - E & 5 - G.

If you now finger a C chord down at the zero fret you will see that those are the 3 notes that make up a 'C'.

Next time will go into how other notes modify a MAJ chord.

Lesson 6: Chord Construction

This lesson was my first step into looking at how guitar chords are put toegher.

It was lots of fun 'cause strangely enough it was making some sense!

Trying to make some sense of my notes from that lesson, one week later is, proving to be more difficult... OK so diving in without a safety net - here goes!

Short Story: 

Major chords: constructed from 3 notes (1st, 3rd, 5th) in the scale.

Minor chords: constructed from 3 notes (1st, flattened 3rd, 5th) in the scale. 

Long Story: 

Major chords are made up of 3 main notes, the 1st, 3rd and 5th note in the scale.

In the C Major scale:

1 = C

2 = D

3 = E

4 = F

5 = G

6 = A

7 = B

So C, E and G are the ones!

As a bar chord on the 8th fret: 

 

To make the Minor you flatten the 3rd note of the major scale. 

In the Cminor from the Major scale:

1 = C

2 = D

flattened 3 = Eb

4 = F

5 = G

6 = A

7 = B

C minor barred on the 8th fret:

Grokking that? 

Just remember that Major is 1,3,5 notes from the scale. 

To make a Minor from a Major chord you just flatten the 3rd note in the scale.

More next time in part 2 of chord making.

Lesson 5: Something showing a scale in use

Intro to 'Since I've been loving you' - Led Zeppelin

Learning WTF a scale is (a group of notes that sound the business together) and how it is put together is the type of ground work I was after from a guitar teacher. How to make music is something else again :)

So my guitar geezer told me to look at Since I've Been Loving You 

by Jimmy Page. It has been called one of the best guitar solos of all time and looking at the intro you can see it sits in pattern, in a scale.

You can hear it here on YouTube

My very rough draw up of the intro tab with no timing shown is:

(right mouse and open image in another window to go large)

Looking at those notes and based on the FECK all I know about scales so far I can kind of tell that that is in either C Minor or D#(Eb) Major.

Should be easy to tell 'cause it is beginning with your index finger on the 8th fret C note (or somewhere around there!) and because you are there with your index finger you are in a Minor. So C Minor.

Looking at where your little pinkie finger is naturally positioned it will be in the D#(Eb) [D sharp / E flat] note. So you could also say you are in D# Major (and the C is the relative minor).

I'm pretty sure Mr Page (being the walk on water guitar god he is) moves in and out of scales and patterns and does what ever the fark he wants when he wants without giving a flying shite about them at all

but it is still nice to know that all of those notes in the intro to 'Since I've been Loving You' are BANG on in the beginners scale I've been learning.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Haaaaaaa

Lesson 4: Transitions

Back to the C major scale and soloing over it. 

 Looking at the scale below 

(which I've duplicated from the most excellent 'all scale looking thing' at all-guitar-chords.com and cut up into patterns below)

all-guitar-chords.com (right mouse and open image in another window to go LARGE)

If you are on the 5th fret and moving up and down in notes in Pattern 5 and you want to get up to the 12th fret and Pattern 3 you can just 'leap' up in there in a single bound like super'fecken'man or you could play other notes on the way up there.

A nice way I was shown to transition between these patterns was to hold 2 notes on the bottom (thinnest) 2 strings and play them at the same time (or close to the same time) and then play 2 more just up in the scale and repeat (with any variation you want) until you get up, or down, to where you want to be next.

Hopefully the image above helps to explain this (but I doubt it!).

Looking at the 5th fret you can hold the 5th fret bottom string and the 6th fret next string up and then ping those 2 notes together and slide or jump up to the 7th fret and then do it again.

You can see that sometimes your 2nd note is 2 frets up, not 1 - as you are trying to 

play notes that stay in the C major scale and sound 'nice' together.

I'll 'YouTube' this one at some point. 

It will take about 10 seconds of video to explain.

Lesson 4: (prequel) It is OK to suck

After listening to Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons play guitar all weekend (and trying to learn some of it) I remember a HUGE penny dropping leap forward in learning to play Chess that helps me learn Guitar. 

Its OK to be shite at it and total failure is as good as success.

You need to LOVE being shite at it.

Embrace the crapness, the failure, the bung notes, the lack of understanding 

and LOVE it.

Wallow like a pig in shite in the failures.

And learn from it.

I wanted this blog to be about my lack of musical understanding (my diminished guitar reality) and my lessons to improve that.
Bring on the failures!

Lesson 3: (part 2) Tango - fark the tango!

The geezer was trying to get me to learn a Tango using E, A minor and D minor with plently of muted strings and slaps and stuff. 

Its too hard and I can't play it. So after a few seconds thought on this one I say 

Fark the Fecken Tango!

So I did a quick You Tube search for something a bit more up my alley and found 'little miss can't be wrong' teaching hill billy Blues.

I was really after something bluesy with string damping to practice ('cause I'm rubbish at holding a rhythm with additional right hand damping or left hand string muting going on).

I've been practicing something along the lines of this. I'll probably add, for amusement value only :) , some YouTube links of me trying to play this later this weekend. Gulp..

If I ever get any good at the Tango rhythm I'll do a post on it - but don't hold your breath..

Lesson 3: (part 1) More Cmajor / Aminor scale

So I went back to the Cmaj scale

and look at it over the entire fretboard

So the notes from the open strings at the zero fret and all the yellow ones are in!

Hopefully the image below with colours for the 2 main shapes we were looking at helps out. 

(right mouse on the images and open em up if you want to see the ends)

To move to play in another key is just a move of that entire pattern up or down the fret board.

So to move to D(major) would mean moving your little finger to the D note on the 10th fret (thinnest / bottom string) and putting your index finger on the B(minor) on the 7th fret (thinnest / bottom string). That is where you would then start 'pattern 1'.

A move to play in G(minor) means putting your index finger on the G note on the 3rd fret (thinnest / bottom string) and putting your little finger on the A sharp (major) on the 6th fret (thinnest / bottom string) and that is where you would then start 'pattern 1'.

To see scales on the fretboard try Guitarist.Net/Scales

After 3 lessons on this it was starting make some sense and we were playing cords in Aminor and I was attempting to play in those notes above over the entire fretboard - and I was pretty crappola at it :)

 

The tango 'beat' is a tricky one & I still can't play it... grrrrrrrrrrr

More on that one next time.