Every song, chord, riff and melody is built from 12 notes. Let’s get to know their names. By the end of this lesson: you’ll know the seven natural notes, understand sharps and flats, and play the complete 12-note pattern on one guitar string. Start with seven natural notes The musical alphabet begins with seven letters:…
Music moves in steps. On the guitar, those steps are right under your fingers. The Short Version A semitone is the distance of one fret. A tone is the distance of two frets. That is the whole idea. Tones and semitones are simply ways of measuring the distance between notes. You will use them constantly…
Seven notes, one repeatable pattern. In Chapter 2, you learned that a tone moves two frets and a semitone moves one. Now we can put those steps in a particular order and hear them become a scale. The Pattern TONE · TONE · SEMITONE · TONE · TONE · TONE · SEMITONE Start on any…
In Lesson 3, you followed a pattern of steps to build a major scale. Now we will choose three notes from that scale and hear what happens when they sound together. A chord shape puts your fingers in place. The notes inside it tell you what you are playing. Three Notes Working Together A triad…
A note tells you where you are. An interval tells you how far you have moved. You already know two intervals: the tone and the semitone. Now we will give names to larger distances. These names help musicians describe melodies and understand the notes inside chords. Give a Distance a Name An interval is the…
The major scale gives us a reference. Now we can describe the notes around it. C major contains C, D, E, F, G, A and B. But music also uses the notes between them. We can name those distances by adjusting the major-scale intervals you already know. Lower a major interval Lower the upper note…
A key gives the music a centre of gravity. Play G–C–D–G. Let the final G ring. It will often feel like an arrival. That sense of home is central to understanding a key. The tonic is the centre In G major, G is the tonic: the home note, with the G major chord acting as…
Keep the scale notes. Change where you begin stacking them. In Lesson 4, we built a major triad from the first, third and fifth notes of its own major scale. Now we’ll build triads on every note of one parent scale. The important difference: we keep that parent scale’s notes throughout. Stack alternate scale notes…
A progression is a sequence of chords moving through time. Knowing the chord family gives you the ingredients. A progression is what happens when you choose their order, rhythm and duration. Those choices give the music direction. Read the relationships In D major, the chords D–A–Bm–G are I–V–vi–IV. The numerals tell you how each chord…
Five notes can give you plenty to say. A pentatonic scale contains five different notes per octave. Its two most common forms are major pentatonic and minor pentatonic. These smaller collections of notes give you a manageable place to explore melodies, hear relationships and shape a phrase. Building the Major Pentatonic Scale Start with a…
Seven notes, with a minor third at the centre of its character. Natural minor uses seven different notes. Compare it with a major scale on the same root: lower the third, sixth and seventh degrees by one semitone. Degree 1 2 3 / ♭3 4 5 6 / ♭6 7 / ♭7 A major A…